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France and the United States. 



Historical Review, 



BY THE 



COUNT ADOLPHE DE CIRCOURT, 

IIOXORARY MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL, SOCIETY. 



Reprinted from the Proceedings of the Society. 



4i^ 




BOSTON: 

PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

1877. 



FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES. 



At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, held 
Oct. 12, 1876, the President (Hon. Robert C. Winthrop) 
communicated an English translation of the " Conclusions 
Historiques," which our Foreign Honorary Member, Count 
Adolphe de Circourt, had appended to the second volume 
of the " Histoire de I'Action Commune de la France et de 
I'Amerique pour ITndependance des Etats-Unis, par George 
Bancroft." 

In offering this communication, the President said that it 
was well remembered by us all that the last volume of Mr. 
Bancroft's elaborate " History of the United States " dealt 
largely and minutely with the alliance between France and 
the United States in 1778, under a treaty in the negotiation 
of which our own Franklin had played so distinguished a 
part, and which had always been so prominently associated 
with the ultimate success of our struggle for Independence. 
That volume had naturally attracted attention in France ; 
and M. de Circourt, with the concurrence of his friend, 
Mr. Bancroft, had translated it into the French language, 
and had published it as an independent work, in three vol- 
umes, under the title which has been given. The French 
translation was accompanied by notes, and by a large mass 
of hitherto unpublished original documents, which had been 
kindly furnished by Mr. Bancroft for the purpose. But, in 
addition to the annotations and the documents, M. de Cir- 
court had incorporated into the second volume a Paper of his 
own, under the title of " Conclusions Historiques," giving a 
summary sketch of the history of the rise and progress of 



American Independence, from his own point of view. This 
Paper, which occupied nearly a hundred pages of the second 
volume of the French publication, had been thought worthy 
of special notice in France. M. Ch. Giraucl, an eminent 
jurisconsult and distinguished Academician, in presenting a 
copy of the three volumes to the French Academy of Moral 
and Political Sciences, after paying a just tribute to the his- 
torical labors of Mr. Bancroft, a Corresponding Member of 
the Academy, spoke of M. de Circourt's " Conclusions His- 
toriques" as a very important contribution, worthy to be 
commended to the public attention. And I have seen (con- 
tinued the President) a letter of our senior Honorarj^ Member, 
M. Mignet, the brilliant French historian, in which, after 
speaking of Mr. Bancroft's volume, and of the precious 
documents, hitherto unpublished, by which it is enriched, he 
goes on to characterize the " Conclusions " as broad, wise, 
(Jeep, — a philosophical resume of the memorable American 
Revolution ; a skilful review of the causes which led to it, 
and of the events which marked its progress; an elevated 
judgment of the position and spirit of the men most distin- 
guished in it, and a clear indication of the consequences 
which were to follow it, — "a true picture, in short, drawn 
by a firm hand." 

It was thought by many of us — and I am glad to say that 
Mr. Bancroft cordially concurred in the opinion — that such 
a contribution to the history of our country, from such a 
source, should not be suffered to remain unrecognized in our 
own land, and that its publication in the English language, 
under the auspices of a Society of which M. de Circourt is 
an Honorary Member, and whose name he has associated with 
his own on the title-page of his volumes, would be only an 
act of justice at once to him, to ourselves, and to history. 
M. de Circourt acquiesced in our desire as soon as it was 
communicated to him, and prepared a brief " Avant-Propos," 
or Prefatory Note, as an explanation of his Paper. 

The President said that he would only add, that the trans- 
lation had been kindly prepared, as a labor of love for the 
Society, by an accomplished lady, who had positively for- 



bidden the mention of her name, and to whom we could thus 
only return what might be called, in an unusual sense, an 
anonymous acknowledgment. That acknowledgment, how- 
ever, would not be the less grateful and cordial on that 
account, and he should feel himself charged by the Society 
to present its best thanks to the translator for her obliging 
labors in our behalf. He would now commit the Paper, with 
the leave of the Society, to the Committee on the publication 
of our Proceedings, who would pass judgment on its appro- 
priateness for our volumes. 

The Committee on the Proceedings having voted to give the paper 

of M. de Circourt a place in their publications, it is accordingly here 

printed. 

Charles Deane, 

Recording Secretary. 



HISTORICAL CONCLUSIONS OR REVIEW, 



COUNT ADOLPHE DE CIRCOURT. 



PREFACE. 



The tenth volume of the " History of the United States," by the 
Hon. George Bancroft, contains the story of events in America from 
the formation of the alliance with the French Crown to the peace of 
Versailles, — from 1778 to 1783. 

In 1876 there was published at Paris, by Vieweg, a work entitled 
" Histoire de 1' Alliance et de 1' Action ^Commune de la France et de 
I'Amerique pour I'lndependance des Etats-Unis."* The first part 
of this work contains a translation, by M. de Circourt, of Mr. Ban- 
croft's tenth volume, which is a distinct and special portion of his great 
work. The second part comprises an original essay by M, de Circourt, 
with the title '• Conclusions Historiques," and various unpublished 
diplomatic documents, generously placed at the disposal of the French 
translator and publisher by Mr. Bancroft. To these documents the 
work owes an interest that cannot be exaggerated. Drawn as they 
are from most authentic sources, and almost all hitherto unknown to 
the student of history, they throw a clear light on many negotiations 
whose consequences have become a part of the annals of the period the 
most fertile in revolutions and the most productive of new creations. 
Here we find the key to more than one event of great importance, 
hitherto an enigma ; here we see the hidden spring of more than one 
decisive resolution. In particular, we find the views, opinions, and 
judgments of Frederick the Great on the events taking place in Europe 
and America, during the war for Independence, painted here in clear, 
strong colors, which contribute not a little to the understanding of that 
penetrating and powerful character, in turn inspired by ambition, 
eidightened by humanity, and swayed by policy. 

It has been thought that these " Conclusions Historiques," although 
they have, and can rightly have, a place only in the French work, may 
yet possess enough interest for the American public to warrant their 
translation into English. Their author has willingly yielded to the 
suggestion ; but he feels it an absolute duty to warn those American 
friends who may kindly read his essay, that its insufficiency will be 
manifest, unless it be read in connection with the work of Mr. Bancroft, 
and vei-ified by the documents with which he has enriched the French 
edition. 

* 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1876. Vieweg, publisher, 69 Rue de Richelieu. 



8 

It is almost superfluous to remark on the coincidence of this publica- 
tion with the Centennial Jubilee of the independence of the United 
States, which is opening the source of so many grave reflections for 
Europe ! The experience of a whole century enables us to-day to 
form a clearer and sounder judgment of the policy of the cabinet of 
Versailles under the good and unfortunate Louis XVI. ; of that of the 
cabinet of Madrid under a king who loved the good of his subjects, but 
the views of whose minister were narrow; of that of the cabinet of St. 
James under an obstinate monarch, tossed by parliamentary struggles 
between two systems, — one trying to prolong the Past, the other to 
adapt itself to the will of the Future. Finally and especially, the grand 
lesson of all these glorious but painful experiences, of increasing pros- 
perity and immense dangers, of j^assionate debates and hasty conclu- 
sions, only brings out more clearly the excellence of the character of 
Washington and his immortal coadjutors in the task which they suc- 
ceeded in accomplishing at the end of fifteen years of struggle, of war, 
of effort, and agitation, — the task of conciliating respect for acquired 
rights with the interest of possible perfection ; the preservation of 
ancient institutions consecrated by Justice with the exigencies of a new 
age; the solidity of the foundations of the political edifice with the 
grandeur of the buildings to be erected upon them ; in a word, the 
passionate jDursuit of Liberty with a submissive adoration of the great 
Author of all things, from whom all good comes, and to whom all good 
should be ascribed. 
June, 1876. 

The establishment of an independent nation in America, the part 
taken by France in the revolution from which it sprang, the constitu- 
tion adopted by the new nation, and the principles on which it was 
founded from the beginning, make the year 1776 one of the most 
important of tlie eighteenth century down to 1789, and one of the 
greatest in the history of the human race. 

Every event of that mighty revolution, understood only partially by 
its contemporaries, but revealing its full significance to our own time, 
should be studied both by itself and in its results. 

Conquered and colonized by European nations, America, for nearly 
three centuries, had been considered both in theory and in practice the 
property of the Old World, destined to receive her surplus population, 
to be governed by the laws and to follow the fortunes of the European 
States which, enriched by her productions, divided and contended for 
her government. 

The Greek colonies, when firmly established, became, as a rule, inde- 
pendent of the mother-country. The Romans, j>redestined to give to 
the Old World a higher civilization, pursued a different course. Rome 
held her colonies in strict subjection, gradually making a world of t^at 
which at first was only a city. * 

* " Orbem fecisti quod prius urbs erat." 



9 

When America received civil and religious laws from the European 
nations, the Litter had followed unhesitatingly the example of Rome, 
whose maxims still had paramount authority with modern, especially 
with western, nations. First Spain, which reluctantly, and only after 
futile struggles, gave up her claim to the exclusive possession of the 
Western Hemisphere, then Portugal, Holland, France, and England 
herself, pursued the same method in the colonies which they founded, 
and the territory they acquired beyond the ocean. But the English, 
who came to the Atlantic coast of America later than their rivals, 
were led by peculiar circumstances to establish colonies under special 
conditions which the English government could not at first fully com- 
prehend, but of which the colonists themselves had from the beginning 
a full and clear understanding. 

The colonists of New England and Virginia belonged to a free race, 
organized for the development of liberty under a monarchy. These 
two principal colonies were separated by New Netherlands, belonging 
to tlie Dutch, until the treaty of Breda,* by which the States-General 
ceded to England all that region which afterwards became New York, 
New Jerse}^ and Pennsylvania. New Sweden, previously conquered 
by Holland, was comprised in this cession, and formed the prov- 
ince of Delaware. Under Charles II., James II., William III., and 
George I., the " Old Dominion," f martial and fruitful Virginia, extended 
on the south to the maarnificent colonies of the Carolinas and Georgia. 

The whole territory between the Alleghanies and the Atlantic, with 
a temperate climate and varied productions, was, by successive grants 
from the time of Elizabeth j to that of George I., given to companies 
of gentlemen belonging to the chiss of English land-owners and capi- 
talists. 

These cavaliers, as they liked to be called, guarded jealously in their 
new home their pride in the principles of civil liberty, and their firm 
resolution to enjoy in their adopted country their EngUsh privileges ; 
voluntarily subjected to law ; paying only those taxes which they them- 
selves levied ; loyal in the main, but attached to the institution of roy- 
alty rather than to the person of the sovereign acknowledged by Great 
Britain, who reigned, it might be by right of birth, it might be by 
the force of revolution. 

Very different were the original settlers of New England. This 
country, which persistent and skilled labor has made one of the richest 
regions in the New World, was, in the first half of the seventeenth 
century, a land of forests and swamps, with a barren soil, severe climate, 
and occupied by tribes who rebelled to the very end against European 
civilization, even after their old superstitions had yielded to the light of 
the gospel. On these shores, where subsistence must be gained by 
hard labor, the pilgrims landed. They belonged to Presbyterian con- 
gregations, over-jealous for the purity of their faith, and avoiding union 
even with other Protestants less severe in their views. These volun- 
tary exiles had been loyal subjects in England, but they had the spirit 

* 1667. t 1680 to 1720. % 1580 to 1730. 

2 



10 

of republicanism, and they interpreted in favor of a democratic jjov- 
ernment the words of the Holy Spirit which they sought in both the 
Old and New Testaments. The royal ]»ower did not regret their 
departure from England, and they obtained without diihculty charters 
granting tliem popular institutions, in the broadest meaning of that 
term. But, in their relations with the mother-country, they continued 
subject to the regulations made by the English parliament for the 
commerce and navigation of the plantations or colonies. The New 
England provinces, originally six in number, but soon reduced to four,* 
became, with the full consent of the crown, true republics, where 
there was neither distinction of class nor hereditary rank; states gov- 
erned according to the Bible and the elements of common law, placed 
under the protection of the P^nglish king and parliament, but free from 
taxation, and subject only to the commercial restrictions fixed by the 
mother-country. These provinces became the seat of a serious, jzener- 
ous people, enterprising, not too ambitious, governed by conscience, and 
possessing in a remarkable degree the character and virtues which the 
prophetic genius of Shakspeare assigned to the English race, when he 
foretold that her king should " make new nations." f 

During the reign of two sovereigns, extremely jealous for their 
rights, England, still half-feudal and intensely monarchical, gave birth 
to societies which became the most prosperous and influential repre- 
sentatives in the Christian world of methods the direct opposite of 
those to which the mother-country still adhered. In the beginning, 
James I. and his son saw, in the colonization of New P^ngland, only 
a peaceful means of getting the suspected and embarrassing Puritans 
well out of the way. Charles I., when the diflTerences between the 
parliament and the crown had become alarmingly bitter and continuous, 
felt some anxiety about these independent Puritan communities, grow- 
ing so steadily on the otiier side of the ocean : by fits and starts, he 
forbade the emigration of especially dangerous persons, but there was 
no method in his action, and his charters equalled or surpassed in lib- 
erality that which his father had given in 1G20 to the Plymouth pil- 
grims. 

In the course of time, Western Europe contributed of its best to 
both the important elements of British colonization in America. 
While the Huguenots, banished from France, carried to the Elnglish 
colonies industrious habits, rigid morality, and religious enthusiasm, 
the mild, laborious, and charitable Society of Friends % founded, under 
William Penn, the flourishing city of Philadelphia, whose very name 
sums up the doctrine of the New Alliance ; and Maryland, on the banks 
of the Potomac, was originally an open harbor of refuge for the English 
Catholics, who, by consent of the crown, were permitted in their new 
homes the exercise of political rights denied them in their native land. 

* By the union of Plymoutli, Boston, and Maine. Tiie other three were 
Connecticut, New Hanipshire, and Kliode Island. 

t Henry VIII., Act 6, Scene 4. Tliis wonderful scene was written, at the 
latest in Itjlo, and possibly ten years earlier. 

t A common name for Quakers, for which there is no explanation. 



11 

English America grew by combat. The generations who built up 
her power knew nothing of the lethargy which comes from the secu- 
rity of peace. All along the inland frontier, whicli was constantly 
pressed backward by cultivation and population, brave and obstinate 
tribes of Algonquin, Wyandot, Cherokee, and Mobile Indians, persist- 
ently fought the pioneers from the provinces. Tq South Carolina and 
Georgia, England had to conquer the claims rather than the arms of 
Spain; but to the north and west of the maritime region, to which until 
the middle of the eighteenth century English civilization had the 
wisdom to confine itself, a rival power arose and for a long time dis- 
puted the empire of the continent. In the New World, as in the Old, 
it was France who contested the superiority of England, and more than 
once threatened the very existence of the English colonies. 

One cannot imagine a greater contrast than that which history shows 
between the principles and results of the systf-ms followed by the two 
nations in tlie treatment of their North American dependencies. The 
English colonies were essentially Protestant, those of France were 
exclusively Catholic. The former were, from the first, political autono- 
mies, on the model of a parliamentary constitution ; the latter were 
creations of the crown, not emanations from the people ; they were, to 
the last, subject at every poiut to the laws, the courts, the administra- 
tive guardianship of the mother-country, who sent them their magis- 
trates, regulated every detail of their civil life, and, by means of 
monopolies, dwarfed their commerce and destroyed their industries. 
Again, while English colonization, clinging at first to the sea-board, 
developed gradually, keeping its compactness, and occupying only ter- 
ritory that it could people, the French, carried away by a passion for 
discovery, and by an impetuous temper that the rigor of government 
irritated instead of restraining, seemed to devour space, penetrating 
into the depths of the forests, and planting their flag on chosen sites 
along the great lakes and the tributaries of the " Father of Waters." * 
But, incapable of holding what their impulsive ambition had grasped, 
they were forced, after a glorious struggle, to yield to the better organ- 
ization, the method, and the steady perseverance of their enemies. 
Little by little, the whole colonial empire, of which Louis XIV. had 
conceived the gigantic plan, fell under British rule ; the peace of Rys- 
wick stipulated for the abandonment of the northern settlements ; f 
that of Utrecht | for the cession of Newfoundland and Acadia; that 
of Aix-la-Chapelle § for the cession of Louisburg ; at last the treaty 
of Versailles, signed in 1763, giving Canada to the English and Lou- 
isiana to the Spaniards, forced France to withdraw her lilies from that 
continent, to which she had nourished the proud hope of giving the 
name of the empire of the Bourbons.|| 

As the F'loridas fell to Great Britain by the peace of 1763, she had 
no foreicrn rival on the northern continent of the New World ; but 



* Indian name for the Mississippi. 

t The Hiulson Bay posts, 1697. { 1"13. § 1748. 

II Nouvelle France, Louisiane 



12 

dangers, which she had until then hardly foreseen, and the gravity of 
which she for a long time did not comprehend, threatened her from the 
heart of her oldest and dearest colonies. 

The immense transatlantic empire of England was formed by adding 
new conquests to old possessions, and had no unity. On the north 
were Canada, Nova Scotia, and the islands which are their natu- 
ral dependencies ; in the south, the Floridas ; between these, the 
thirteen colonies, governed according to charters granted by England, 
and settled by born or naturalized Englishmen ; finally, in the west, 
there was a vast, almost unexplored territory, divided by the Ohio 
River, into two nearly equal portions, occupied chiefly by Indians, but 
where French colonists had already begun settlements. The conquest 
and possession of these was considered one of the greatest advantages 
whicli England gained from the Seven Years' War.^ 

Wherever European culture had been introduced by France and 
Spain, even in those provinces where conquest had changed the nation- 
ality of the iidiabitants (as was the case in the peninsula of Acadia), 
Great Britain found obedient subjects, and could establish, without 
opposition, laws favorable to English power and English commerce. 
Those possessions that, with the exception of Florida, Great Britain 
still holds, were, at the time of their cession, very thinly populated. 
In 1713, Acadia had only 20,000 souls ; in 1760, all Canada had but 
60,000. If we add 40,000 for the islands and for Florida, from 1713 
to 1758, we have only 100,000 Europeans in those countries, which 
under the rule, or, more accurately speaking, under the protection of 
Great Britain, have seen their population increase, in a single century, 
to 3,860,000.1 

But, if England could act freely, and with perfect safety, in the 
countries which she had conquered, her position was wholly different 
in the colonies, which were her children, whose fortunes had been one 
with hers from their foundation. 

The misunderstanding between the mother-country and the colonies 
dates back to the reign of James II. ; but for several generations the 
tendencies toward separation, and the strong wish for independence, 
had been held in check by the feeling of a conmion danger to be re- 
pulsed, of a common overpowering interest to be made victorious. 

While the duel between France and Great Britain lasted on the 
continent, the sovereigns of the Houses of Stuart, Oi'ange, and Bruns- 
wick, found in the provinces only Englishmen, ready to sacrifice every 
thing for the defence of their country, and the conquest of the French 
posts, which were near enough to be troublesome. When this war, 
which had lasted almost through the century, % ended, the thirteen 
provinces were already organized as States, and busy with their own 

* 1756 to 1763 for Europe and the East Indies. In America tlie war began 
in 1754, and virtually ended at the close of 176U. 

t Census of 1871-2. 

X War broke out between France and England in 1624, but was soon ended. 
It was renewed with violence in 168'J ; but it bad continued in the hearts of the 
colonists of both nations, even while their governments were at i)eace. 



13 

civil affairs, while the mother-country continued to treat them as 
colonies. 

The thirteen provinces contained at that time 2,200,000 iidiabitants, 
not counting the small number of native Indians. The negroes, whom 
a fatal speculation had introduced upon the Southern plantations, and 
scattered to some extent through the Northern States, were not one- 
sixth of this number. This great population, with a vast extent of 
fertile land was no longer a mere colony : It was a nation! It could 
no longer be a dependency : it was an empire. These tiutlis, or rather 
these ideas, had taken root in the Anglo-American mind, which general 
education had prepared for the boldest thought ; l)ut the mother- 
country understood very differently the relations which her colonies 
should hold to her. She claimed sovereignty over the nation created 
by her care. 

On this point, no especial blame attaches to the crown and the par- 
liament of Great Britain. Tlie principles which they declared and 
maintained were at the foundation of public law in every nation of 
Europe; while in the application of those principles to her American 
colonies Great Britain, with generous inconsistency, was far more 
lenient than Portugal, France, Holland herself, and especially than 
Spain. But this partial authority, confined to a few points, and 
with rare exceptions * enforced with marked discretion, was more 
than the colonists were willing to bear. English, for the most part, by 
race ; English in language and manners, — they would not yield one of 
the political privileges enjoyed by their countrymen at home. It 
seemed unjust to them, and it irritated them that the British Parlia- 
ment insisted upon absolute authority over the acts of the provincial 
assemblies which regulated taxes and the internal administration. They 
recognized the right of taxation only by legally elected representatives, 
and they had no representation in parliament. As to foreign countries, 
the Americans did not dispute the right of the king of Great Britain 
" to declare wai', to conclude peace, to make treaties of commerce and 
friendship." They also submitted to the navigation laws between 
American and foreign ports ; but they claimed free communication, by 
land and sea, with all parts of that British Empire (whether in Europe 
or out of it), of which they were subjects ! f They wished also perfectly 
free trade between the jjrovinces, and the right of manufacturing their 
own productions as well as those of Great Britain. Finally, it was of 
great importance to them to preserve the right of building and selling 
merchant-vessels, and of sharing, in the American fisheries, all the ad- 
vantages guai'anteed to British subjects by the law of nations, and by 
special treaties. These claims naturally seemed unreasonable to the law- 
yers and statesmen of monarchical Europe. The freedom, always bold. 



* Arbitrary and violent acts in the government of tlie provinces were con- 
fined in Virginia to the Protectorate of Cromwell, and in New England to tlie 
latter years of Charles II., and to the dark reign of .James II. 

t Re(/nicole is the French equivalent of the English word subject, in its tech- 
nical meaning. 



14 

sometimes insolent, with which American organs vindicated them, in the 
face of the King and his ministers, prejudiced and to a certain degree 
irritated Parliament and the ruling classes in England. Nevertheless, 
as these claims had for foundation clauses in numerous laws, and, still 
more, the general spirit of the English Constitution, equity required 
that they should be attended to ; prudence gave the same counsel, and, 
if it had been heeded, the destinies of the world would have been 
changed. But wounded pride and mistaken interest closed the ears 
and the hearts of English rulers against American complaints, up to 
the year 1782. It seems to us that an impartial study of this impor- 
tant and difficult question v/ill lead to the conclusion that absolute 
right was on the side of the Americans, but that the conduct of the 
English Government and people deserves great indulgence. We speak, 
of course, of the causes of the war itself, not of its conduct by either 
side. We may well be astonished, however, at one of those contradic- 
tions so frequent in the political life of nations, and in which the tragic 
becomes ridiculous. As soon as the attention of Europe was drawn 
to the dispute between Great Britain and her colonies, the most ear- 
nest protects, the most pathetic pleas against the " criminal injustice and 
egotism " of the Elnglish nation, and, above all, of her government, 
were made by the two nations who had imposed and, continued to 
maintain in their transatlantic possessions the most despotic yoke, the 
most ingeniously oppressive system of rules, that can be imagined. 
Neither France nor Spain ever thought seriously of giving to their 
transathTUtic settlements the smallest fraction of that freedom which, 
in good faith, doubtless, and with generous enthusiasm, they demanded, 
even with arms, for the English colonies, as the " prescriptive right of 
civilized nations." Americans, resting on the joositive law of their 
country, and the common law of their native land, had better justifica- 
tion for the war which resulted in their independence. 

Whilst every tiling favored the growth of the colonies, the boundless 
resources of their soil, the uprightness of their lives, the wisdom of their 
provincial institutions, at least in comparison with others, the mother- 
country saw her means for controlling her American colonies lessen year 
by year. The provinces had never done any thing toward the main- 
tenance of a standing army. The militia was, in time of peace, reduced 
to the garrisons of forts on the Indian frontier. The strength of this 
military organization had been shown in the Fi'ench war; but, having 
at this time no ibreign enemy, it existed merely as a barrier against 
royal pretensions, as a menace to the royal governors sent from beyond 
the sea. These had authority, which they frequently used, to dissolve 
the provincial assemblies ; but they gained no real advantage from it, 
for the new elections gave constantly increasing majorities to the patriots 
and the sons of liberty, as the advocates of the absolute inde[)cndence 
of the provinces called themselves. The Americans, on their side, 
could refuse to pay the salaries of the royal officers ; and, undignified as 
this method was, it became the custom of the democratic legislators of 
the North. Great Britain garrisoned the castle in Boston, and other 
old forts which commanded the entrance to rivers or harbors ; but 



15 

she kept only a small army, and parliament would not grant the 
money necessary to hold the colonies in check. It was the ;^ame with 
the squadrons cruising off the coast, of which all the expense was borne 
by the royal treasury. The mother-country would not submit, in time 
of peace, to expenditures of which, as she thought, America had all 
the benefit ; whilst the colonies insisted that they were wholly in the 
interest of the royal prerogative, and absolutely refused to have any 
thing to do with them. 

It was this question, apparently purely financial, but really involving 
the foundations of political order, which brought about the bitter dis- 
pute, in the reign of George III., between the provinces and the 
mother-country, — a dispute which could be settled only by arms, and 
which finally resulted in the war of which the later events are given 
in the work we have now offered to the public. 

Parliament, alleging that the defence of the Colonies imposed very 
heavy burdens on the mother-country, and that the provinces, as part 
of the empire, should themselves contribute their fair share of tlie 
common expense, thought it right to impose a few taxes for the benefit 
of the royal treasury. They were laid on tea imported from China, 
then in general use ; on glass and colors, and on written legal or finan- 
cial transactions, for which stamped paper must be used,' manufiictured 
in England, and sold to the provinces by the exchequer. Taxes so 
light have seldom been imposed on a people living in almost universal 
comfort ; but the colonies considered them despotic exactions, because 
they were levied by a parliament in which the American provinces 
had no representation. The fundamental principle of English con- 
stitutional liberty was directly attacked by this measure, so the pro- 
vincial assemblies, without exception, protested against its execution, 
and encouraged the people to resistance. The objects on which these 
taxes were levied were in daily use, and the rejection of stamped paper 
would have put a stop to business, if private persons and public 
ofiicers had not acted in direct violation of the order in council. 

Resistance, at first passive and quiet, soon became turbulent and 
seditious. In even the most enlightened and religious communities, 
there are lees which it is dangerous to stir up, and which agitation 
among the better classes brings to the surface suddenly and fatally. 
Boston was then the principal city in the thirteen provinces. The 
lower class, heated by excitement, indulged in disgraceful outrages 
against the revenue officers, and many respectable citizens who did not 
share in the general enthusiasm. The European garrison made cruel 
reprisals, and by speedy action the city was put under martial law, and 
the harbor blockaded. The interruption to navigation, and the diffi- 
culty of land communication with the rest of the province, caused great 
suffering in Boston, for which the whole country testified the warmest 
sympathy. That city, the first to give passionate expression to the 
general sentiment of the colonies, was honored as a martyr to public 
liberty, and became the cradle of a revolution whose echoes the whole 
world heard.* 

* 1772, 1773, and 1774. 



16 

The separate i)roviiices eujoyed such wide and undisputed liberty, 
that they easily formed a regular and even legal league for the defence 
of their common interests. New York * projjosed a congress of dele- 
gates. Massachusetts, the most populous and influential of the north- 
ern provinces,! eagerly supported the proposition, which was finally 
adopted by the thirteen colonies, and this " Continental Congress" (the 
inoffensive and significant name taken b}"" the assembly) met in Phil- 
adelphia in September and October, 1774. In good faith these repre- 
sentatives of the American people still sought to avoid a rupture with 
the mother-country; but the proposals of the English Government 
were none the less declared inadmissible by these continental delegates, 
and the complaints of the colonies were sent to the royal ministers in a 
spirit which contained the threat of a complete and final separation. 
The duty of urging these claims upon the ministry devolved chiefly 
upon Benjamin P^ranklin, t a citizen who personified, as it were, the 
habits and principles of former generations, and the tendencies of the 
present. In England, the Postmaster-General of America, the physi- 
cist whom discoveries in natural science had made famous, could not 
fail to inspire respect. In France, men saw and welcomed with sin- 
gular enthusiasm the architect of his own fortunes, who affected 
patriarchal simplicity in appearance and manners. They were struck 
at first by his peculiarities ; but this impression soon gave place to ad- 
miration more ardent than reasonable. 

In Great Britain, the feeling about American claims was divided. 
Very few persons realized the importance of the subject, and the ex- 
tent of the still unused resources of America, now on the verge of 
insurrection. 

In general this transatlantic England was regarded with kindness ; it 
was liked for its courage and its attachment to civil liberty : but they 
wished it to maintain toward the mother-country the submissive atti- 
tude of a son toward a father who has protected his infancy and in- 
structed his youth. Above all things, dismemberment of the empire 
was feared, and on this point the commercial and political interests 
were equally alarmed, and equally decided not to yield. In fact, no 
one in England or on either continent could foresee that friendship 
and extended commei'ce betw^een two independent nations would much 
more than compensate for the losses produced by the dissolution of 
the political tie which had united them. 

This result which statesmen and business men thought impossible, 
because it was oi)posed to administrative and commercial routine, was 
nevertheless brought about, in spite of the bitterness and blind i)reju- 
dices born of the long and bloody war, on both sides of the Atlantic. 
More than one generation passed, however, before confidence and cor- 



* May, 1774. t June, 1774. 

t Benjamin Franklin, born in Boston in 1706, resided in London, as the 
agent for New England, from 1757. He was recalled in 1775, and soon sent 
back to Europe on a very different mission, whieli occupied ium till 1783. He 
saw the beginning of the French revolution, as he lived till 17'J0. 



17 

cliality were restored. The complicated questions arising from the 
rights of neutrals and the immunity of flags were decided differently 
in England and America, caused numberless combats and acts of vio- 
lence on all the seas, and resulted in another formal war between 
Great Britain and the American Union (1812 to 1815). Time was 
again needed for these new wounds to lieal, and commerce to resume 
its peaceful course. But when we compare the amount which the 
colonies, on the most favorable hypothesis, would, as a part of the 
British Empire, have contril)uted to the royal treasury, with the mag- 
nificent sums the United States now pour into Great Britain, in spite 
of the often oppressive (and as we believe unwise) duties laid by Con- 
gress, we must conclude that like all the legitimate results of true 
liberty the emancipation of the thirteen provinces should have been 
agreed to in 1774 by Great Britain; that it should have been seen as 
a material advantage for commerce and manufactures, which were then 
taking great strides, and becoming an important factor in general 
policy. But at that time England had not the indispensable teaching 
of experience, and in the discussion of new questions the first decision 
almost always comes from pride and pi'ejudice. 

George 111. had been on the British throne* for fourteen years. He 
was the first among the sovereigns of his family who was English by 
birth, character, and language. This prince, pure in private life, of 
t-eligious habit-:, making no distinction between the interests of the 
crown and the nation, united those faults of the head and virtues of 
the heart which characterized the best and most influential Tories, 
The Tories were in power, but always threatened by the systematic, 
often popular, and always plausible opposition of the Whigs. For six 
years the statesman who was justly called the '* great commoner," 
and to whom England confessed that she owed the happy results of 
the Seven Years' War, William Pitt, had outlived himself under the 
title of Earl of Chatham. Lord North was prime minister, kept 
in office by the favor of the king, although the responsibility was too 
great for his mind and character, which were not above conscientious 
and partially educated mediocrity .f George III. overvalued the ser- 
vices of Lord North, because that minister entirely agreed with him 
about American claims and the policy to be followed in the govern- 
ment of that country. The opinion of the first lord of the treasury 
decided that of the council, and in the two Houses of Parliament a 
considerable majority supported the crown. George HI. thought it 
very important, for the sake of conscience and honor, to preserve for 

* George III., born in 1738, was the son of George Frederic, Prince of Wales, 
who (lied before his father, George II. The reign of George III. was the 
longest in the annals of Great Britain. Beginning in 1760, it continued, 
nominally it is true, till 1820. But the reign of George IV. dates, in fact, from 
1809, when he was made regent. Tiie most marked reverses, and the most 
brilliant triumplis, of England belong to what is called the time of George III. 

t Lord North was born the same year with Washington, 1732. Upon his 
majority he entered the house of commons, and at twenty-six was made a 
meml)er of the cabinet. As first lord of the treasury, he succeeded the Duke of 
Grafton in 1770. 



18 

his country tlie integrity of his transatlantic empire, and for his crown 
the totality of its prerogatives on both sides of the ocean. Conse- 
quently, and remote as he was by temperament from any form of vio- 
lence, he did not hesitate to put his jiersonal authority into the balance 
to secure the rejection of the American proposals. This was the 
opinion of the ministry and the decision of jJai'Iiament. Among the 
orators of the Whig party, the colonies had eloquent advocates ; but 
the vote in both houses was against them, and however opinions might 
ditfer among the ruling classes, on questions of internal policy, Ameri- 
can affairs were left to the preferences of tlie king and tlie judgment 
of his ministers. To the English people, this was a question of national 
honor involving their claim, until then undisputed, to the supremacy of 
the seas. It was also a commercial question, to be settled with great 
care, and for the exclusive advantage of the mother-country. 

The Americans, on their side, were determined not to yield their 
right, and nothing remained but a resort to arms. Every day imbit- 
tered the disjnite ; every point of contact on the wide reach of land 
and sea produced bitter quarrels and tights between the " islanders " 
and the " continentals." The first battle (and through its effects the de- 
cisive one) was in Massachusetts, between a detachment of the garrison 
of Boston and a few companies of provincial country militia. Tliis light 
at Lexington,* which would have been the mei'est skirmish in a I-Curo- 
pean war, put American minds in a ferment, and set American hearts 
on fire. The colonists were resolved to die, if need were, for a cause 
Avhich they believed just and sacred. As to-day the thrill of the elec- 
tric wire carries in an instant to the limits of the vast country the 
knowledge of an act and the expression of a will, so the example of 
the Massachusetts country militia determined the thirteen colonies to 
maintain by arms the claims of the provinces, and no longer to retain 
their hitherto peaceful attitude. Before the end of May, 1775, insur- 
rection was universal ; each of the thirteen provinces had, through its 
representative assembly, declared its resolution to oppose the unjust 
claims of the crown, and for this purpose to form the militia into a 
continental army for a short term of service. The officers were to be 
commissioned by the magistrates of the different provinces. A second 
Congress met at Philadelphia, and appointed f Colonel George Wash- 
ington, of Virginia, commander-in-chief. This choice was one of those 
which Pi-ovidence dictates to assemblies, w^hen it is about to make them 
its agents in designs which shall revolutionize the world. 

Boston was the only city in the original provinces which the English 
army still held ; the other garrisons, separated by immense distances, 
could hardly control the recent acquisitions of the British Crown on 
the American contiuQut. The royal governors were everywhere 
deposed, and forced to take refuge on board the ships of war. Au 
enthusiastic and superficial race would have thought the war ended : 
the Americans knew that it was hardly yet begun. There was no 
common government, no common policy, among the provinces : an 

* April 19, 1775. t June 15, 1775. 



19 

immediate end to be gained, an accident, as it were, had caused the 
convocation of an extraordinary Congress ; that was all as yet. Sover- 
eignty had not been formerly withdrawn from the crown : thi;* chief 
point was still in doubt. Common action could then accomplish the 
work of the common will, oidy by the brain and force of a commander 
intrusted with the defence of national right. But the American conti- 
nent possessed no officer of much experience in military affairs, or who 
had shown superior talent in any serious war. Then, too, this general, 
to be chosen by foreknowledge of the future, rather than consideration 
of the past, must have a heart free alike from the towering ambition of 
a Cromwell and the crafty egotism of a Monk, must desire to be the 
devoted servant of his country, the disinterested defender of her laws ; 
in one word, to be -what the Orientals beautifully call " the zealous 
advocate of justice." 

With talents that were not brilliant, but were always equal to a 
laborious and complicated duty, Washington, by his firmness, his 
absolute self-possession, his perseverance, his unwavering trust in the 
protection of heaven, and his strict honesty in the management of pub- 
lic money, soon acquired an influence over the insurgent population 
equal to that which in his first campaign he exercised over the militia, 
whose regiments in too rapid succession came under his command. 
We may, without exaggeration, say that, from 1775 to the establish- 
ment of the Constitution in 1789, public affairs in America* depended 
upon one man; so that, upon several occasions, the people meant the 
army, and the army meant its general. This man was Washington. 
More brilliant qualities, a more hasty temper, a heart conscious of the 
temptations of personal ftime, would have destroyed the harmony of 
this unique character : history gives no other perfect example of such a 
character, and the century which has passed since he lived has no- 
where produced his peer. Washington, born in 1732, was in middle 
age, in full strength of mind and body, in perfect health, and fully 
conscious of his intellectual power, when the unanimous vote of the 
delegates from the thirteen provinces made him commander-in-chief 
of the American army. 

A large royal garrison held Boston still in subjection. It was 
rightly considered the key to New England, and was undoubtedly — in 
intelligence, wealth, and population — the most important town that 
English colonization had up to that time planted in America. To 
deliver this natural capital of their country was the first, and, for a 
time, the only object of the levy of troojos in the provinces. But 
Washington could only lay siege to the city. Nevertheless, an enthu- 
siasm which he could not oppose, although he believed its immediate 
success impossible, led the American soldiers to make an assault on 
the city of the Pilgrims. The redoubt on Bunker Hill became, on the 
17th of June, 1775, the scene of a battle which in American annals is 
described with the enthusiasm and tenderness that the remembrance of 
Morgarten excites in the Swiss cantons. On both sides, the courage 

* Romana stetit res. 



20 

was equal. Every soldier who fought in that narrow space believed 
the right was on liis side ; the names of Prescott and Howe, reconciled 
in a common glory, will live, like those of the heroic soldiers whose 
dust rests in brotherhood beneath the monumental stone on the plains 
of Abraham.* 

The year 1775 was the precursor of great mental activity in Europe. 
Watchful of the quarrel between P^nghmd and her colonies, the Old 
Woi'ld believed that she saw new destinies for the human race revealed 
in the principles declared by the Americans, and in the first acts which 
followed this declaration. Souls, especially in France and Germany, 
glowed with the ardor of passion and the simplicity of inexperience. 
They made ready for the coming of the golden age, and that generation 
was often moie unreasonable than when it hoped to find perfection in 
the future, rather than to imagine it in the past. 

Louis XVI, had just been anointed king. Inheriting power beyond 
the strength of his mind or character, burdened with a terrible succes- 
sion of faults committed by his predecessors, and whose gravity he did 
not conceal, this young prince, irreproachable in manners, loyal in 
intention, sincere in his love for his people, understood, at least par- 
tially, the need of important reforms in all branches of the public 
service. But his authority, absolute in theory, was in fact, strictly 
limited by custom and even by institutions. The king had neither the 
energy necessary to overthrow obstacles, nor the fatalistic temper that 
would accept them and let things alone. On one side customs were 
sustained that time had loaded with abuses, but that still appeared as 
respectable traditions ; this category begins with the olim of parlia- 
ment, and ends with the details of court etiquette. On the other 
side, the doctrines of the philosophic school had acquired over the mind 
and even over the conscience of the nation the authority of real dogmas, 
while they still floated in the vagueness of Utopia ; irritated, but not 
repressed, by the ill-combined resistance of the established authorities, 
these doctrines took the aggressive form of revolutionary prophecies. 
From this condition of mind, and this struggle sure to continue, it 
resulted tliat the monarch had the whole responsibility of events, but 
only an indefinite siu\re in the possession or exercise of power. 

Philosopliic culture, aspiring with proud confidence to govern aflfiiirs 
by intellect, presented at this time two distinct phases. On one side, 
the publicists and economists; on the other, theorists boldly criticising 
political and social systems. In the first gron|) learning, calm medita- 
tion, conscientious experiments, wise love of humanity and knowledge 
of the best means to serve it, were united in those hard-working writers 
formed by the instructions of Montesquieu, Quesney, and Turgot. Pi-e- 
eminent in this honorable company are the keen intellect, the affection- 
ate and strong heart, of Malesherbes. This school gave fraternal 
greeting to the works of the great contemporary jurists of Italy. 
Beccaria was respected equally on both sides of the Alps; and Filan- 
gieri disseminated in Naples the teaching of the " Esprit des Lois." 

* Montfiilin and Wolfe under tlie walls of Quebec in 1759. Tlie defeat of 
the former was that of Leonidas, and the latter died in the liour of victory. 



21 

The other group of writers and thinkers who agitated France 
followed very different ways. Viewing the present with pity and the 
past with horror, misled by the exam|)les of classical antiquity, from 
wliich in college they had gathered false ideas, wholly inapplicable to 
modern society ; burning, moreover, with an audacious desire to renew 
religion, legislation, and social order, according to types existing only 
in their imaginations, tiiese theorists, who arrogantly took the name of 
philosophers, were at once the most dangerous dreamers and the most 
powerful tempters who had appeared in Europe since the great eras of 
the revival of letters and the Reformation. Multitudes of all classes 
engerly read their declamations, which were sometimes eloquent, but 
generally puffed up with sonorous platitudes and high-sounding soph- 
isms. Jean-Jac<|ues Rousseau, the oracle of this school, was sur- 
passed by his disciples, who were not, like him, saved from gross 
mistakes by a genuine sentiment for the beauties of nature, and an oc- 
casional experience of kind feelings. 

Between these two companies who had no concert of action, but 
gained equal success in their different spheres, shone a constellation of 
learned mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, naturalists, and physi- 
cians, who carried the exact sciences forward rapidly and steadily. 
Respectful towards the established policy of government, these men, 
among whom Buflfbn worthily sustained the honor of the country of 
Descartes, excited by the novelty of their demonstrations the distrust 
and protest of the clergy : this misunderstanding was unfortunate, and 
of benefit only to the materialists, who now began boldly to defy the 
restraints of the law, having already violently broken away from the 
authority of the schools. 

No serious thinker will reproach us with ovei-stating the influence 
on the political destiny of our nation of this intellectual excitement at 
the time of the American war ; and it would be equally impossible to 
deny the power, almost without counterpoise, that the dominant opin- 
ions of France (whether really or only apparently so) had at the same 
time over the rest of the European continent. In consequence of the 
last war of the preceding reign, the kingdom of Louis XIV., although 
enlarged in territory,* had politically fallen from the eminent pltjce she 
had held since the ministry of Richelieu. Her armies were less for- 
midable, the poverty and disoixler of her finances were known, the 
talents of her negotiators were undervalued. But her language had 
by universal consent become the speech of diplomacy and of inter- 
national instruments, as fashion had made it the language of polite 
society from the Tagus to the Neva. France ruled by her genius even 
the people who had overcome her ; all minds turned to her with sub- 
mission rather than jealousy ; to be approved in Paris was the highest 
aim of all political and literary ambition ; the prestige which Athens, 
even after the loss of her power, so long maintained over Greek, Asi- 
atic, and Roman antiquity, belonged to the France of Voltaire and 
Bufibn. 



* By the annexation in 17G6 of the Duchies of Lorraine and Bar, and in 
1769 of tlie Island of Corsica. 



22 

The king shared in this tumult of thought, only by his generous de- 
sire to put ;in end to every form of oppression and injustice; he was 
inclined to confer civil rights on dissenters, and would have removed 
all trace of serfdom; he thought ftivorahly of free trade at first be- 
tween the provinces of his kingdom, afterwards among the nations of 
the whole world ; he had a noble but not aggressive pride in the 
national dignity. At the beginning of his reign, he called to his coun- 
sel science and virtue, personified in Turgot and Maleslierbes : but, in 
his eagerness to repair the last and most unpopular of the violent acts 
of his prede(;essor, he placed in his own path a fotal obstacle to reforms ; 
he recalled the parliament which Louis XV. had dissolved, and re- 
stored its power of making good the claims which it sanctified by the 
name of '• rights " ; so that henceforward, instead of being an honored 
mediator between the sovereign and the people, it oidy checked the 
benevolent action of the former, and drove to madness the impatience' 
of the latter, already duped by the exaggerations and ftintasies of the 
fashionable philosophy. 

Instead of recalling to the ministry the Due de Choiseul, whose ob- 
vious faults were counterbalanced by rare gifts, Louis XVI., conscien- 
tiously following the recommendation of the dauphin his father,*' 
turned to Maurepas, whom a long absence, passed in indolence and 
frivolity, had deprived of the advantages given him by age, and the ex- 
perience in affairs which he formerly had under tlie regency. 

But in giving to Neckei-, whom public opinion marked out as the 
most skilful and honest of financiers, the task of restoring the credit 
of the kingdom, then on the verge of ruin, Louis XVI., by a praise- 
worthy effort, conquered his personal feelings, and even the jjrejudices 
which education had deeply rooted in his mind. 

All Europe was then at peace. Catharine the Great had stopped 
her victorious f troops on the road to Byzantium. The Ottoman em- 
pire began again to enjoy for another century the protection which 
a political theory, passed into a dogma, granted it on the part of the 
western powers. The first partition of Poland had been accomplished t 
without bloodshed ; and that nation seemed ready to profit by the tei-- 

* Tlie prominent part taken by the Due de Clioiseul in the expulsion of the 
Jesuits from tiie kingdom, and in the succeedinu; steps leading to the suppres- 
sion of tlie order by Clement XIV., had deeply offended the heir to tlie Freiieh 
crown. Angry words between the dauphin and M. de Choiseul made it impos- 
sible for the minister to serve as a counsellor for the dauphin, who wouhl lie- 
come his master, if, in the order of nature, the son outlived his father. Tiie 
Due de Horry, whom the premature death of liis two ehlor brothers had made 
lieir-presum|itive and second dauphin, was only two years old when the death of 
the only son of Louis XV., in the flower of his age, put France in numrniiig, and 
was looked upon as the beginning of those calamities vaguely foreseen in the 
future. The men charged with the education of the new daupiiin did not neg- 
lect to impress upon him the aversion which ids father felt for Choiseul, and to 
make him resolve to keep that minister in disgrace, although the cause of his 
downfall, brought about by Mme. du Harry, was an honor to him. 

t 'J'reaty of tvainard ji, signed in 1774. 

t Agreement coiiciuded in 177-! between the dividing powers, and signed by 
the Polish government in 177o. 



23 

rible lesson, and to introduce indispensable reforms in its social organi- 
zation. The events which followed in America found the Old World 
in condition to give them its exclusive and earnest attention, soon grow- 
ing into passion, as at that time every great and new thing did. 

From the first representations made by American assemblies, and 
the first engagements between English troops and the sons of liberty 
in New England, the almost universal feeling in Europe was admira- 
tion and sympathy, not for the English, who were defending the supi'em- 
acy of P2urope and the universal system of colonial government, but 
for the Americans, who were driving back one and preparing fiital 
blows for the otiier. 

We can understand why Frederic and Catharine, governing with the 
brilliancy and power of genius the two nations most recently admitted 
to the " European Alliance," were uidiesitatingly favorable to a revo- 
lution which in no way injured them, but might revive their com- 
merce and re-establish equality of flags on the seas frequented by their 
mei-chant ships. But France, Spain, and Holland, maritime powers, 
and overvaluing their transatlantic possessions, needed only calm reflec- 
tion to see that, in favoring the American colonies, they shook to its 
foundation and menaced with ruin their own immense colonial system. 

This system was in foct incomparably more severe, more pledged to 
monopolies, and to the absolute subjection of the provinces, than any 
which the British government, even in its harshest and proudest moods, 
had dreamed of imposing upon the American colonies. 

But Europe was still under the influence of the treaty of Versailles, 
that triumph for England. The treaty was only eleven years old, and 
nothing had occurred to weaken its important results. England as- 
sumed the right of regulating, according to her own customs and for 
her own interest, the laws of navigation on the high seas. It was 
almost universally believed, although it was certainly an error, that 
the possession of the old thirteen provinces in North America was the 
chief element of the commercial prosperity and political greatness of 
the Queen of the Ocean. People were far from foreseeing that condi- 
tions of commercial equality between the mother-country and the coun- 
tries which she had settled beyond the Atlantic would yield more real 
advantages to England than her former sovereignty, and that she need 
not buy those advantages by heavy military expenses, and the painful 
labor of holding restless and angry vassals in subjection. 

All this explains why jealousy and vindictiveness prevailed in the 
cabinets first of Versailles, then of Madrid, and at last at the Hague ; 
and why they outweighed the counsels of sound statesmanship. In the 
united provinces, the envy and fanatical hostility of the people urged on 
the government; but, in France, one of tlie striking inconsistencies of 
the time was, that admiration for English institutions, curiosity about 
English thought, a passion for English customs, were the fashion with 
the upper classes, at the very time they eagerly took part against Eng- 
land. Louis XVI. and the most intelligent of his ministers watched 
with deserved distrust the effects of this Anglo-mania not only on the 
fashions, but also on religious and political opinions. At the same time, 



24 

national enmity, which had never been extinguished, and which the 
disaster of the Seven Years' War intlained, acted with equal force on 
the nobility, the army, the navy, and on the whole nation, fond of wai-, 
proud of a superiority incontestable in its own eyes, with natural gifts, 
and an ambition to make its voice heard by its own and by foreign 
governments in the discussion of the great atliiirs of the world. 

The king of Fi-ance was far from sympathizing with the ardor and 
'determination of his people. Hatred was foreign to the nature of 
Louis XVI. His ambition was to re-establish order in the finances, 
and to improve the legislation of his country ; peaceful by tempera- 
ment, he was not less so by delicacy of conscience. Duty was always 
before his eyes ; the study of French history had taught him to deplore 
alike the extravagance of his two predecessors, and the useless and 
unjust wars whicli had tilled the principal part of their long reigns. 
But, inheriting the rank which Louis XIV. had held in the world, and 
which Louis XV. partially forfeited, Louis XVI. neglected nothing 
to uphold the claims of his crown by powerful forces on land and on 
sea. 

His army, in which the foreign element might be thought too large, 
was hardly equalled in Europe ; and there was none that could be called 
superior. The navy had made good its losses, and boasted of seamen 
who had never been surpassed : is it not enough to mention the Bailly 
de Suffren, the Comte de Grasse, and the Admiral d'Estaing ? The king 
was the more easily persuaded to use these magnificent instruments. 
Nevertheless, he decided only after long hesitation, after bitter conflict 
with his conscience and his sagacity: in fine, this resolution was, like 
the other decisive acts of his life ; he obeyed, instead of commanding ; 
he yielded to the excitement of the popular will. 

Every thing, then, conspired to fix the attention of the Old World 
upon America ; to turn upon the questions raised in America the 
thoughts and passions of an age of immense intellectual activity. The 
commissioners sent by Congress with diplomatic powers to the differ- 
ent govenmients of Europe, and received merely as official agents, 
sought to make friends among the ruling classes, by the propagation of 
their doctrines and the contagion of their ideas. Maria Theresa, 
indeed, refused to receive any of them, and Frederic adroitly avoided 
either receiving or rejecting them. But the envoys were listened to 
at the Hague, at Madrid, and still more at Paris, where Franklin, the 
only thoroughly consistent man among them before Adams came to 
Europe, soon acquireil influence to which the prudent Vergennes was 
obliged to make concessions ; but the pei'suasive eloquence of the ad- 
vocate of the rebels had no hold on the inflexible principles and clear 
foresight of the firm and cool Turgot. 

Meanwhile the last appeal of the American Congress to the king and 
parliament of Great Britain having obtained no proposition for peace 
which the colonies were willing to accept, George III. and his minis- 
ters took energetic measures to increase their army in America. But 
the British people, although in sympathy with their sovereign, fur- 
nished a. very small number of voluntary recruits, and England had 



25 

never dreamed of conscription for service out of the country.* Re- 
course to foreign States was necessary for the purpose of hiring troops. 
It was first in Russia, then in Prussia, that George III. exhausted all 
the resources of his ingenious, rather than scrupulous, diplomacy, and 
used all his personal influence to persuade the courts of Europe that 
the cause of Great Britain in America was the cause of all monarclis. 
All overtures to the great courts failed, but the smaller States yielded 
to the temptation of English subsidies. Troops enough, and for the 
most part well disciplined, were raised in Hesse, and in some portions 
of lower Saxony and Franconia. At this news, there was an outbreak 
of public indignation not only in France, but in the Netherlands and 
many parts of Germany. One can see by this how two centuries had 
changed the feelings and convictions of Euro^je, where the profession of 
arms was still the most honorable of all professions, if it was not 
the most popular. Until the end of the sixteenth century, and even 
during the Thirty Years' War, it was entirely lawful for the ruler of a 
country to put the flower of his people into military service, under 
conditions fixed by himself, and for any cause that he thought would 
be of advantage to himself; but in 1775 the general cry was that the 
blood of the people should be shed only in defence of their own inde- 
pendence, or at least in the service of their own interests. In England, 
the opposition orators enlarged upon this theme with the warmth 
of conviction, sincere in most of them, and well feigned by the rest. 
Nevertheless, the German troops fought bravely in America ; but the 
employment of them destroyed the last trace of that traditional affec- 
tion, which, in spite of political diflerences, would have continued to 
exist for a long time between the motlier-country and her colonies. 

Determined henceforth to spare nothing, the colonies proposed an 
alliance with Canada and Nova Scotia, in order to leave to the English 
army no line of operation on the continent, and to oppose a compact 
body to any military force employed to compel English America to 
accept any other terms than those which Congress made its ultimatum. 
But, on this point only, the skill of the English government had foiled 
in advance the American plans. The " Canadian Bill," passed by 
Parliament in 1774, had granted to this country (which had become a 
mixed colony, French in the East, I^nglish in the West) a charter of 
provincial liberties which surpassed the hopes of the inhabitants, and 
satisfied their highest claims. The military government, imposed in 
1760 after the reduction of Montreal, was abolished; the Catholics 
were to have full civil rights, and at the same time they acquired polit- 
ical rights, of whicli they had been totally deprived under French rule. 
Hence they became loyal subjects of Great Britain, without affection, 
to be sure, but nevertheless useful allies, provided they were not sent 
out of their country. 

Washington acted then rashly, although generously, when, at the 
request of Congress, more ignorant even than he was of the real state 



* It was different with the militia. 
4 



26 

of affairs, he decided * to send to Canada a considerable detachment of 
the continental army, of imperfect discipline and ill provided. The 
brilliant gallantry of Richard Montgomery could not supply those 
resources necessary to hold Montreal, still less to reduce Quebec. But, 
for the second time, the most heroic blood of both hemispheres was shed 
under the walls of the proud cai)ital of New France ; after the death 
of Montgomerj', whose fate called out expressions of tender sympathy 
in both cam[)S, Morgan and the other generals led steadily and suc- 
cessfuly the retreat of tiie American army, in mid-winter, to those 
Tliermopylajs of New P^ngland, f to which new feats of arms would 
give new fame. 

It was impossible for so complete a revolution to be on the eve of 
consummation in the thirteen provinces, without a division of parties 
in the Presbyterian colonies of the North, and among the planters of 
the south heirs of the cavaliers of the time of the Stuarts. In reality, 
at the beginning of the ti'oubles, a party of loyalists was formed, who 
were attached to their country, but wished to preserve allegiance to 
their sovereign. Convinced that the propositions of the Britisli minis- 
ter ought to be accepted as the basis of a reasonable agreement, these 
Americans refused to enter the ranks of the militia raised to fight 
against the crown. The first severe measures against these few but 
resolute adherents to the old order of things were decreed by Con- 
gress at the beginning of the year 1776. Washington constantly 
endeavored to soften in practice the treatment which popular passion, 
so naturally blind and brutal, often made odious, but which reasons of 
State deemed necessary. 

At the South, the loyalists, uniting with the small bodies of marines 
at the disposal of the royal governors, delayed for a short time, and at 
the cost of much suffering, the adhe.sion of these colonies to the policy 
of Congress, accepted with much less opposition by the North. To 
day the hatred is extinct, and justice has her dues. Americans who 
are the avowed opponents of the principles for which the loyalists 
struggled and suffered recognize the fact that, with the exception of a 
few adventurers whose memory is for ever disgraced, this party tow- 
ards which the American Union was inexorable luitil after the final 
republican victory and the conclusion of peace with the mother-coun- 
try, deserved the esteem which is excited by generous sentiments, and 
the respectful pity due to great misfortunes borne with dignity. 

In March, 1776, General Howe,t yielding, after a courageous resist- 
ance, to the persistency of an adversary who revived the victorious 
patience of the ancient Fabius, decided to evacuate Boston, and to 
make New York the seat of war, reduced as he was to a single army 



* September, 1775. 

t Military positions near Lakes George and Cliamplain, and at the head- 
waters of tlie Hudson. Tlie fate of Canada, defended by Montcahn, was 
decided in these regions in tlie campaigns of 1758 and 1759. 

I Lord Howe, liis elder brother, was at the same time commander of the 
EngUsh naval forces on tlie American coast. 



27 

corps, with which to conquer the whole immense continent. This 
resolution prolonged the war for six campaigns : it was, however, con- 
sidered in Europe a confession of inferiority, and the American cause 
gained that increase of favor which the multitude instinctively gives to 
superior power, as well as to the promises of fortune. 

Meanwhile it became clear to all reflective men that war must be 
the arbiter between the parties in this contest. The alternative for the 
colonies was absolute submission or definite separation. They would 
accept nothing from the favor or the free-will of the king of Great 
Britain : tliey desired a formal contract based on the acknowledgment 
of their right. Any return to the misunderstandings, contradictions, 
and collisions that had made so much misery under their former rule 
seemed intolerable to them ; they believed that laying down their arms 
at this time would be the virtual renunciation of the only sure guar- 
antee for their liberties ; finally, they had tasted the reality of inde- 
pendence, and they desired to make it the foundation of their future 
existence. Towards the middle of the year 1776, minds and con- 
sciences were ready for the mighty but single step into freedom. 

The province of Virginia was the first which dared to make the 
declaration of which modern history, up to that time, offered only a 
single precedent ; that of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, 
when, by the manifesto of Utrecht, in 1579, these countries formally 
repudiated the sovereignty of King Philip II., a sovereignty which 
had been respected in theory and in words to the middle of the civil 
war. Washington, from his headquarters, gave approbation and en- 
couragement to tliis resolution, which Richard Henry Lee presented 
to Congress, then sitting in Philadelphia. The vote of this assembly, 
where tliirteen States (the term provinces was dropped with the alle- 
giance to England) were represented by forty-nine deputies, was 
declared, after the most mature and calm deliberation, on July 2d, 177G. 
The words of the resolution, which made a new era in universal his- 
tory, should be transcribed in their strong and grave simplicity. 

^^ Resolved, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, 
free and independent States ; that they are absolved from all allegiance 
to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them 
and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, dissolved." 

The declaration, which was to make this known to the thirteen colo- 
nies, (and we may add, without exaggeration, to all Europe watching 
for this event); this declaration, of which the future consequences were 
incalculable, was prepared by Thomas Jefferson, the first jurist and 
publicist among the statesmen of Virginia. No military hand had 
touclied this work ; Washington and the army desired but did not dic- 
tate it ; their part, to which they held with modest and assiduous zeal, 
was to make it respected when it became the law of the country, and 
to demand the recognition of it as the end of the war with tlie power- 
ful adversary who spared no pains to bring it to naught. 

A statement of the grievances of the colonies against the English 
government forms the second part of the declaration. It was in its time 
of great intei'est to belligerent nations ; a knowledge of it is still essen- 



28 

tial to the unclerstan<ling of tins ])ortion of American history. But the 
proclamation of principles on which tlie American Congress based the 
Revolution, wliich it called openly by this name, and from which it dated 
the new existence of its country, was in reality addressed to all nations 
which shared in modern civilization. Not only the States hostile to it, 
but entire Europe witnessing this radical innovation, considered the 
declaration as the expression of a new era.* It reads : " That all men 
are created equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights ; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ; 
that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these 
ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute 
a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organ- 
izing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to 
effect their safety and happiness." 

Two points in this are to be especially noted and remembered : first, 
the government of George III. was not renounced by Congress because 
it was monarchical ; limited monarchy with a national representation 
had up to this time been the choice of American public men ; but this 
authority was renounced, because, in the decided opinion of the Ameri- 
can people, it had exceeded its prerogative, and violated the rights 
guaranteed to the colonies by solemn compacts : f second, although, in 
the Declaration, the Creator is named with reverence as the author of 
all good, and the source of all law, yet the use of Bible language was 
carefully avoided in the revision of the act ; there is nothing to indicate 
to an ordinary reader that it represents the religious convictions and 
the will of a nation definitely and exclusively Christian. A centmy 
earlier, in such a juncture, the style adopted by the organs of the nation 
would have been very different ; but, in the Presbyterian colonies par- 
ticularly, we cannot doubt that the principles and conclusions would 
have been identical with those of 1776. 

The 4th of July, the day of the official announcement of the Decla- 
ration, has ever since been kept in the United States as the birthday 
and national holiday of the American Republic. 

The declaration of the independence of the United States produced 
an immense sensation in E^urope. It was an absolutely new event in 
modern history ; an event which deranged all recognized alliances, 
introduced a novel and still problematical % factor into general politics ; 
and, what was still more serious, it responded to newly awakened pas- 
sions, and opened the way of entrance, into active and practical jiolitics, 
for ideas formidable by their magnitude, their demands, and their 
vague generalizations. 

It was, indeed, a challenge which the New World sent to the Old, that 

* "Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo." (Virgilii Bucolica, Ec. IV. 
V. 1.) 

t Bancroft, History of the American Revolution, vol. ii. chap. 70, ad Jinem. 
J 111 its results. 



29 

until now had been looked upon as the owner of America, and the 
undoubted leader of the whole civilized world. This calm and authori- 
tative voice spoke the language of the most energetic race in the world, 
and one which best knew political liberty by experience, theory, and 
practice. 

Throughout all Europe, from Ireland to Poland and Greece, minds 
which the philosophic school, reviving and re-enforcing the lessons of the 
classical school, had taught to appreciate the vices of contemporary 
society and to hope every thing from the future, were in ferment over 
this event. This, in the confusion of brilliant dreams, gave a glimpse 
of the endless progress vvliose partial realization must cost nations 
passionate struggles and incalculable suffering. 

In France, with which we are especially concerned, the almost 
universal sympathy of the upper classes, filled with military ardor, 
forced the hand of a king, just, but doubting his own power, and a 
divided and unpopular ministry. This enthusiasm for novelty discred- 
ited the political traditions wliicli the philosophical school had made so 
popular. So, months before Louis XVI. had decided in council to 
assist the American rebels, generous volunteers and shrewd speculators 
undertook to furnish soldiers and arms to tlie Americans, whose name. 
Independents, was considered an honorable designation. Government 
watched this alliance, vvitiiout daring to oppose it, for some time before 
it openly encouraged it; and France was equally interested in its two 
elements represented by Lafoyette and Beaumarchais. Fashion, that 
tyrant of what is called society, had taken Americans under her pro- 
tection. She cared little for the colleagues of Franklin, who had 
nevertheless special talents, but she flattered the chief commissioner of 
Congress, until the extravagant admiration lavished on him would have 
made him ridiculous, if his solid virtues and intelligent patriotism had 
not lifted him above the silly deification decreed him by the modern 
spirit and its curious levity. 

F'ranklin's task was, nevertheless, one of the most difficult that it is 
possible to imagine. The United States possessed, in fact, a vast terri- 
tory inhabited by brave and industrious people ; a great future was 
before them ; but, at present, they had for their struggle with the richest 
nation on earth, no munitions of war, no military equipments, no money, 
and, what was still worse, no permanent organization. The confedera- 
tion, hardly more than proposed, could not put at the disposal of Con- 
gress the resources which different parts of the country possessed: 
Congress itself was only an assembly of deputies sent by thirteen dis- 
tinct States, each jealous for its own sovereignty ; so, even while har- 
mony reigned in their sentiments, it rarely existed among their opinions. 
Congress could order levies of men, could assign its contingent in 
money to each State ; but it had no power to execute its orders. Every 
State arrogated to itself the right of interpreting them in its own way, 
and received them as simple recommendations. 

In such a situation, it seemed evident that, without the assistance of 
one or more of the European powers, the American war would end in 
the total defeat of the Independents. It was apparent that the Bi-itish 



30 

forces could not actually pacify and usefully occupy so vast an extent 
of territory, stretching far into the continent; victory must be fruitless 
in a country where each inhabitant was at heart hostile to foreign 
rule; but it seemed probable that English arms would disorganize 
local administrations, prevent another session of Congress, and, in a 
word, destroy the United States, and plunge the whole country into 
confu-^ion, ruinous for transatlantic JCngland ; but from which Great 
Britain would gain only a barren triumph, and a burden of expenses 
for nncounted years. 

The bitter feelings awakened by the war blinded the British parlia- 
ment to these truths, while in France, where they still reasoned coolly, 
the friends of America concealed nothing. Consequently, their solici- 
tations to the minister, and to the king himself, became continually 
more urgent and even threatening. Because the monarch of the oldest 
and most absolute government in the world held in his hand all admin- 
istrative power, they wished to force upon him the part of chief actor 
in a revolution wiiich, if successful, w^onld necessarily place before 
France the alternative of promptly carrying out social reforms in her 
own organization, or of braving the incalculable chances of a struggle 
against an inevitable revolution. 

This unnatural state of suspense and change in the counsels of the 
monarch lasted two full years, during which small quantities of arms 
and ammunition, and inconsiderable sums of money, advanced secretly 
by the treasury, were sent to the United States, adding little to the 
resources of the army, but keeping up the hopes of statesmen and the 
confidence of the people in the nltimate success of their undertaking 
through an offensive alliance witli F' ranee. 

Washington saw more clearly than any one else the needs and the 
dangers of the array and the nation, and so, more than any one else, 
was frank and urgent in his communications to Congress and his cor- 
respondence with American agents abi'oad. He could see safety for 
the United States only iu a formal alliance with France ; in words, 
where modesty was united with perfect dignity, he placed his country 
under the protection of Louis XVI. ; he did not deceive himself as to 
the small assistance to be gained at this time from Holland, or even 
irom Spain. 

Meanwhile the American war grew to huge proportions ; the two 
armies, moderate in number, equal in courage and perseverance, 
measured their strength on battle-fields from the banks of the St. Law- 
rence to the sliores of Georgia. Congiess was eager to acijuire Canada, 
Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland ; Great Britain would yield nothing 
of the immense empire which she thought the treaty of 17(53 had con- 
solidated, and which stretched from the Northern Ocean to the Mexi- 
can Gulf, from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, from Labrador to the 
Bahama Chainiel. The summer of 177G was s[)ent by Congress, 
after the signing of the Declaration of Indt^pendence, in regulating the 
work of the Confederation. In September, the arrival in America of 
the young Mai'(piis de Lafayette was hailed as the forerunner of the 
French alliance, and the promise of a formal treaty with a nation 



31 

whose universal prestige liad suffered little from the series of reverses 
she had borne towards tlie end of the last war, which she persist- 
ently carried on in many lands, and on all the seas of the globe.* 

Lafayette, at nineteen, without worldly experience, or practice in 
war, was, nevertheless, the fascinating ideal of the French nobility, the 
model of modern chivalry, so different in feeling and faith from that of 
former days. A few gentlemen, leaving, like him, tlie restless frivolity 
of court, or the idleness of garrisons on a peaceful frontier, accom- 
panied to America the young volunteer, whom there awaited, in his 
own country, at a distance of only thirteen years, a future which he 
could not foresee of bewildering changes, political greatness, and 
cruel sorrows. 

The example which he set, of departing without the consent of the 
king and braving the displeasure of the minister, was soon followed 
by soldiers and adventurers very unequal in character and capacity. 
The first were Poles, whom the recent disasters of their country had 
driven to foreign lands, and of whom Pulaski and Kosciuszko were 
the most important ; the next were German officers, grown gray in 
harness, and seeking only to continue their trade on new fields of battle 
or strategy. Washington received them all warmly, and employed 
them with all the discretion he was permitted to use. But Lafaye<,tte 
became his favorite pupil. The young volunteer soon surpassed the 
hopes of his general, by the quickness of his understanding, and the 
cool courage with which he performed the difficult tasks often confided 
to him. 

In the mean time, it became necessary to thoroughly revise the 
separate constitutions of the States belonging to the Union, proposed, 
rather than accomplished, in order that the different original charters 
should be made to agree essentially with the fundamental principles of 
the Declaration of Independence. This labor occupied the intervals 
which the war allowed to public councils from the summer of 1776 to 
the close of 1782. In this work, which was happily finished long before 
the Federal Constitution was complete, the newly emancipated States 
of America gave to Europe a wholesome example, which uufortuuately 
was not sufficiently heeded, nor clearly understood, and not followed on 
any of the occasions which afterwards presented themselves. It was 
a matter of course that the office of royal governor, and that of the 
hereditary magistrates, who continued the succession of the proprietors, 
the founders, by the original cession of several colonies,! should be 



* The surname and family name of the Marquis de Lafayette, Gilbert 
Motier, was inherited from an ancestor, Marshal of France, and one of the later 
heroes in the Hundred Years' War against England. This lieutenant of Charles 
VII. died in 1464. The name of Latayette was brilliant in literature also ; the 
age of Louis XIV. produced no more charming and solid talent than tliat of the 
faithful friend of La Rochefoucauld and Mme. de Se'vignc'. The alliance of the 
young Marquis de Lafayette with the family of Noailles increased his influence 
at court, and establislied him firndy in tiie world. 

t They were Maryland; the two Jerseys, united in one province ; Pennsyl- 
vania ; and, in some particulars, New York. Already, by successive modifications 



32 

abolished. But these offices, with the privileges derived from feudalism, 
were the only ones abolished. Nowhere else did the American people 
risk entering the path of innovation. They preserved all of the 
colonial organization that was sound, and adapted to the future growth 
of public affairs. Each State retained legislative power, by means of 
, elective assemblies ; usually there were two of these, checking and 
supporting each other. A council, also elective, and charged with 
executive powers, had the right of nomination to public offices. The 
president of this body, first officer of the State, preserved the ancient 
and honored title of governor. In some States, Roman Catholics were 
disfranchised ; but this restriction soon gave way before the progress of 
ideas of universal toleration. A cei-tain amount of pi'operty was, with 
fixed conditions of age and moral character, a requisite qualification 
for the exercise of the elective franchise. Nothing was introduced into 
legislation which could favor license of writing or lessen respect for 
property. The terrible question of slavery forced itself upon the con- 
sideration of all the legislatures, but was seriously treated only in New 
England and Pennsylvania. These five States decided it in accordance 
with the principles of humanity and the suggestions of prudence. The 
Union so lately formed of so diverse elements, and so imperfectly 
cemented, had not the resolution, and probably not the power, to ex- 
tend to the Southern States the plan for the gradual emancipation of 
slaves which was gloriously adopted by the North. We would gladly 
turn our eyes away from this great injustice, this great danger. How 
diflferent the Constitution of tlie Great Republic of the West would 
have been, on this Centennial Jubilee of the Union, if the fathers of 
independence had been willing and able to render to their country this 
other service, equal or superior, in moral and political value, to all those 
which America owes to them in the eighteenth century ! 

It is impossible not to delay the reader for a moment on this subject, 
which was one of the chief causes of the most gigantic civil war of 
modern times, and which raised storms of tumultuous sympathy through- 
out the Christian world. 

At this time, slavery and the slave trade were equally condemned by 
the philosophic school ; but its abolition did not seem to be impera- 
tively demanded by Christianity, and economists considered the con- 
tinuance, even the extension, of this custom as absolutely essential to 
the life of the colonies. Among the firmest champions of American 
independence in France and in the New World were slaveholders who 
never dreamed of freeing their slaves. Washington regretted that this 
institution existed in Virginia, but he never proposed to abolish it. In 
the Southern States, they feared for the future of the [plantations, if the 
negroes were not kept by force. But the Middle and Northern States 
hacl little to lose by the gradual emancipation of negroes. These 

of the original charters, the rights of the proprietors hail been restricted to the 
use of nuinicipal ami provincial liberties, and was merely a source of revenue. 
In both the Carolinas and in Georgia, these rights had entirely disappeared, 
reverting to the crown. 



33 

States had the great merit of being the first in their age to pass from 
the theory to the practice of tlie evangelical teachings, equally wise 
and humane, which condemned forced labor and arbitrary payment. 
But they could act freely without making great sacrifices. From 1774 
to 1800, the financial condition of the Union was such that all men of 
affairs would have shrunk from the redemption, even at a very low 
rate, of the four hundred thousand human beings then held in bondage 
soutli of the Suscpiehanna. The sum of eighty or a hundred millions 
of dollars exceeded the credit as well as the resources of the whole 
Confederation. In a situation similar to that of English America, 
Peter the Great, fifty years before, had thought it impossible to abolish 
serfdom in Russia. His noble successor, Alexander II., has resolutely 
and prudently brought about this change, in the most successful man- 
ner. He was sustained by the spirit of his age, and by the extent of 
the resources which public prosperity put at his disposal. Providence 
did not grant Washington this precious boon. America, when she 
entered upon her new career, was doubtful and timid in a matter 
which, above all, she should have taken hold of and regulated. If she 
had acted according to her convictions, she would have won immortal 
glory, and would have been spared — for the issue was delayed only two 
generations — calamities from which memory shrinks, and which sadden 
prophecy. 

As a whole, the political action of the United States showed Europe 
how far nations can carry reform, without overthrowing social order 
and fiinging themselves into the darkness of revolution, of which even 
the benefits are stained by violence. England alone profited by this 
calm and beautiful lesson. She could overcome her natural vexation, 
and receive from a recent enemy suggestions, wisely used by statesmen 
worthy the esteem and gratitude of posterity. But in France, and on 
the continent generally, attention was given to that which Americans 
destroyed, and contempt to that which they by improving had pre- 
served and consolidated. The consequences of this false and partial 
view were not long delayed ; but we cannot with justice lay the respon- 
sibility of them on America, who offered the safeguard with the danger. 

The first assistance given to the United States, with the connivance 
but without the official approbation of the French Government, placed 
that government in an equivocal and undignified position towards Eng- 
land. 

Besides, these small contributions served only to keep hope alive 
in the Americans, but did not help them to fight with any real chance 
of success. Philadelphia was occupied by Sir William Howe on the 
26th of September, 1777. Congress, instead of dispersing, boldly ad- 
journed to Baltimore. The temporary occupation of the city, then 
considered the political capital of the country, produced more excite- 
ment in Europe than in America, where, as Mr. Bancroft says, with 
equal wisdom and boldness, " it was a war of ideas more than of 
material power." * It was the same in the second and last war of 

* History of the American Revolution, vol. iii. p. 405. 
5 



34 

Great Britain with the United States. At that time, Washington and 
Phihidelphia surrendered to an arn^v better disciplined tlian their own, 
and to a navy which had then no rival on the seas. Yet tlie conditions 
of peace * were favorable to America, who did not give np an inch of 
her territory, or yield one of her just claims. 

Before the close of this year, a decisive action took place, which more 
than counterbalanced tlie disaster at Philadelphia. Tliis event of the 
war occurred in the North, on one of those battle-fields where, since 
the discovery by Champlain to the latest laurels gathered by Mont- 
calm, French blood has flowed in so many encounters. The army 
corps under General Burgoyne was moving from Montreal to New 
York; if the corresixtnding movement had been carried out by the 
other lialf of the English army, holding the mouths of the Hudson and 
tlie Delaware, the rebel territory would have been literally cut in two. 
This result must have discouraged even the energetic characters and 
manly souls of New England ; but Burgoyne, surrounded in the forests 
of Saratoga, by militia under General Gates, was compelled on Oct. 13, 
1777, to sign a capitulation, by the terms of which he was to embark 
his troops at Boston for England, and promise not to serve again 
against America during the war. This expedition, which deprived the 
English of ten thousand soldiers, ought to have finished the war. 

In fact, the best judges of military matters, the masters of the art of 
war in the Old World, agreed unanimously that, after the capture of 
Burgoyne, the English could by no possibility regain a foothold in the 
northern provinces, by whose resolution and resources the war was 
chiefly sustained. Frederic, laying aside his habitual reserve, expressed 
this conviction in free and plain terms. This monarch did not like 
the English government, altlioiigh he professed great esteem for the 
British peo|)le. He had a sad remembrance of the work of the Tory 
ministry during the Seven Years' War, when, notwithstanding the 
entire unity of interests between Great Britain and Prussia, the latter 
had been assisted tardily, imperfectly, and with marked unwillingness, 
by the great and rich power which ran the same risks with Frederic, 
but in its policy followed a course too selfish to be sagacious. The 
American war gave the king of Prussia occasion to show his resent- 
ment, not by action, but by severe expressions of opinion, by putting 
the weight of his judgment, acknowledged to be the most influential in 
Europe, into the scale against P^ngland. 

In Great Britain, national honor seemed moi^e than ever at hazard ; 
and the attitude of France becoming at once more manif(\stly hostile, 
the fierce and implacable opposition between the nations blazed out 
Avith unquenchable fury. It was on this occasion that the shrewd 
and determined minister of Louis XVI., Vergennes, obtained from his 
master authority to conclude with the United States a treaty of com- 
merce and amity. From this it resulted, not only that France ac- 
knowledged the independence of the colonies, but that the king agreed 



* Peace of Ghent, signed in 1814. 



35 

to give them his support in establishing their sovereignty on a firm 
foundation. This treaty was signed at Versailles, Feb. 6, 1778, and 
at the same time ships of war were put in commission to convoy mer- 
chant squadrons to American ports. Such proceedings clearly implied 
war with England ; but with a lingering hesitation, caused by his con- 
science, Louis XVI. wished to tlirow upon his rival the responsibility 
of pronouncing the fatal word. By his order, in March, the French 
ambassador in London officially notified his Britannic Majesty's Secre- 
tary of State of the existence of a treaty of commerce and friendship, 
which his most Christian majesty had concluded with the United States 
of America, " that are in full possession of their independence, declared 
on the 4th of July, 1776." 

To this decisive communication, George III. made the reply ex- 
pected by both nations. He recalled his ambassador from Paris, and 
presented to parliament, where his ministers were sure of a sufficient 
majority, the measures necessary for the conduct on a suitable scale of 
a war which should extend to all parts of the world. 

On the 20th of March, 1778, Franklin and his colleagues, who had 
been officially recognized as commissioners from Congress, had a formal 
audience with Louis XVI. The coldness and harshness which on this 
occasion the king took no pains to conceal showed how little his saga- 
cious mind and sensitive conscience were affected by the popular enthu- 
siasm which had spread through his whole court. But the die was cast. 
M. Gerard de Rayneval, one of the warmest friends of Vergennes, 
was sent as minister plenipotentiary to Congress ; he embarked on a 
squadron, which sailed from Toulon the 10th of April, with a large 
quantity of military stores for the Americans. 

A single incident, which sliows the spirit of the age, idolizing the 
pleasures of intellect, and intoxicated by the view of an enchanting 
future, was then exciting all Paris much more than the beginning of 
a war in which torrents of blood would flow. Voltaire, returning to 
the capital after an absence of twenty years, presented to the French 
Academy, in solemn session,* and by a condescension almost imprece- 
dented in its annals, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, calling them 
the " forerunners in Europe of the star of liberty which had risen in 
America." 

During the stormy debates which the proposition of the king raised 
in both houses of parliament, Chatham, then near his end, made his 
appearance once more in the house of lords, and, on the 7th of April, 
uttered, in a dying voice, his final protest against the use of iniiuman 
proceedings in the American war, including in his condemnation the 
very "principle of that unn.atural war between two sister nations." 
The time was long past when the elocpience of the " great commoner " 
moved the souls of the people, and decided the votes of the senate. But, 
in tragic dignity, the closing scene of that long life t was worthy of the 



•* Tlie 27th April, 1778. 
t William Pitt, first of the name, was born in 1708. Entering the cabinet in 



36 

drama of which fifteen years before the peace of Versailles had seemed 
to give England the glorious end, — a drama about to recommence under 
strangely different auspices. The house of lords did not attend Cliat- 
ham's funeral. He had, in fact, never belonged, by sentiment or sym- 
pathy, to the hereditary branch of the liritish legislature. The tirst 
Pitt gave to England, to the house of commons, in his second son, who 
never wished to be other than William Pitt,* a genius less proud than 
his own, but a character better fitted to combat with tlie difficulties of 
all kinds tb.at embarrassed his career, even when he demanded immense 
sacrifices of the nation without being able to promise immediate suc- 
cess, but still a patriotism more enlightened, a genius which seldom 
won admiration, but always inspired confidence. 

The events which followed the treaty between France and America 
are related in the work of which we offer a translation to our readers. 
We beg them to bear in mind that the historian of the United States 
proposed to write the history of the war of independence, in reference 
only to the events which concern the destiny of America, and her situa- 
tion after 1776, relative to tlie powers of the Old World. It was not 
the task of Mr. Bancroft, and it is not ours to recount in detail the 
phases of that Five Years* War, during which the Indian seas, the coasts 
of Africa, and the Mediterranean, were theatres of numerous brilliant 
engagements, the honor of which was shared equally by tlie two chief 
actors, " the flag of the lilies, and that of the leopards." We borrow 
here the figurative language of our fathers, and we desire at the same 
time to render full justice to the generous sentiment which softened the 
horrors of war on both sides, and threw even upon the miseries which 
it infiicted on humanity a gleam of courtesy and chivalric honor. De- 
voted with the simplicity of filial love to the cause of their king, who 
stood to them for their country, the soldiers of both nations experi- 
enced during that long war nothing of those brutal enmities which 
produced atrocities, and which unhappily were revived when the war 
reopened in 1793. Fighting under different banners, devoted to the 
profession honored at that time above all others in the western world, 
these adversaries never spared each other on the battle-field ; but their 
anger died with their battery fires, and they unhesitatingly trusted 
each other's honor when the fortune of war made them prisoners. 
The great ideas which had caused the war remained the only objects 
which, with few exceptions, both ofiicers and soldiers had in view until 
the peace. The elevation of these motives gave nobleness to their 
actions, and stamped their language with the seal of dignity. 

1746, he became the head of it in 1756, and resigned tliis great office in 1761. 
Five years later, he was banislied from the theatre of liis glory by accepting a 
peerage with the title of Earl of Cliathani. Keturning to public affairs in 1766, 
his ruined health, eiubittored temper, and overweening pride made him of no 
use, and he finally retired in 1768. 

* William Pitt, second son of the first Lord Chatham, was born in 1759. In 
1781, he entered the house of conunons ; in 1782, the cabinet, and in 1784 be- 
came head of the ministry. He died in 1806, worn out by hard work, and 
broken-hearted at the defeat of the coalition in Germany. 



37 

We must, however, remember that this spirit of generous courtesy 
showed itself" mucli more in favor of the superior officers than towards 
subalterns, and that common soldiers gained very little from it. Deli- 
cacy of conduct lessened with the rank or grade of the actor. The 
condition of prisoners crowded into unhealthy enclosures, and often 
into floating prisons, is painted in the memoirs of the time with colors 
that to-thiy excite shame and remorse. Besides this general dispositiou 
of things, the American war was carried on with a tenacity which led 
on both sides to uncounted severities and lamentable excesses. In 
every civil war, the conflict of principles assumes a painful character 
of fanatical excitement ; the practice of reprisals, indispensable perhaps, 
but always grievous, hardens hearts, and calls tiie executioner to do the 
woi'k of the soldier. The employment of Indians as auxiliaries to the 
British troops was a sin against strategy, and a worse one against hu- 
manity. In adopting this cruel measure, the British generals had for 
excuse the usual practice of belligerents, French as well as P^nglish, in 
all former wars ; but there was something peculiarly revolting in let- 
ting loose such enemies upon adversaries of the same blood, speaking 
the same language, and who only the day before were fellow-citizens. 
The dark side of the war was noticed and excessively blamed through- 
out Europe, and the remembrance of the atrocities committed a cen- 
tury ago on the Indian frontier, helps even in our time to keep alive 
in the American people bitter prejudices and unkind feelings towards 
Great Britain and its government. 

Early in 1783, the peace of Versailles put an end to the warlike 
period of Louis XVI.'s reign, and placed the European powers in a 
new position, to be changed again in eight or nine years by the outbreak 
of the French Revolution. But the alarmingly rapid succession of 
events only removed the Old AVorld farther and ftirther from the con- 
dition existing before the American war, a condition to which she could 
never return. 

P^rance came out unharmed in honor or territory : but she had ac- 
quired nothing new ; and her public debt, very large for that time, 
absolutely demanded measures which the ancient regime could not 
carry out unless by reforms in finance and in other branches of admin- 
istration so radical as to entirely change its nature. 

Holland had suffered irreparable losses ; and the contest between 
the aristocratic* republican party, and the stadtholder, sustained by 
the confidence of the people, raged so violently that arms alone could 
decide it. William V. requested the intervention, not of England, but 
of Prussia, to maintain him in his position of royalty, which still in 
public acts preserved the name of republic. The successors of this 
prince, when party hatred had once sul)sided, gathered from this very 
situation advantages which, by confession of the whole nation, the 
country enjoys to-day. 



* It was in fact tlie patriciates of the cities represented in the provincial and 
general assembUes of the states who formed a permanent and systematic oppo- 
sition to the office of stadtiiolder. 



38 

Pi'ussia saw the monarch wlio had created her power close his career 
by a hard-earned peace, in which his hist efforts had secured an advan- 
tage more soHd than brilliant for the maintenance of the constitution of 
the empire. The Germanic Roman Empire was virtually divided into 
two confederations, with unsettled boundaries. The antagonism be- 
tween the courts of Vienna and Berlin was as marked as ever, and 
was the most striking feature of German politics. The result of it 
was a sad series of internal quarrels and external defeats, although 
war Avas not formally declared between the two sovereignties till 18G(j, 
— the eightieth year after Frederic's deatli. 

The ambition of Joseph II., no longer held in check by the tried 
wisdom of the great Maria Theresa (who died in November, 1/80), 
turned towards Italy and the Turkish Empire. It threatened Venice, 
and the Danubian principalities Bosnia and Servia. This ambition, 
and the restless activity of a monarch eager for glory, ardent for the 
right, but unscrupulous and unskilful in gaining his ends, had decided 
Joseph II. to make a close alliance witli Russia, although he could 
reasonably expect from so unequal an alliance only benefits entirely 
disproportionate to the sacrifices that he would demand of his state, 
whose revenues were small and finances in confusion. 

Catherine II. without resorting to arms, had attained the lofty 
rank that she sought, when she proposed the league of neutral nations 
for the protection of their flags in time of war. Admitted among 
the Christian powers less than a century before, Russia obtained for 
the first time the consideration and credit wliich belong to the protectors 
of a cause just in itself and in harmony with the true principles of civ- 
ilization. The Empress continued on the defensive towards Sweden, 
the old rival of Russia, and was in readiness to renew the systematic 
operations which should force the Ottoman power, driven to the south 
of the Danube and the Caucasus, to restore to European civilization 
the beautiful regions on the north of the Black Sea, and on the Sea of 
Azof. 

The three years of war during which Madrid was the ally of France 
gave to S[)ain advantages quite out of proportion to the importance 
of the contingent she furnished in troops and ships. She regained 
Minorca, although dismantled,* and the Floridas, which the council of 
the Indies vainly fiattered themselves would give them back their 
former naval supremacy in the Gulf of IMexico. Minorca, unnaturally 
separated from Spain, ought to have been restored. The Floridas wei'e 
of no use to lier. The fortress of Gibraltar had resisted all assaults, 
and the Spanish fiag could not float over it, notwithstanding the enor- 
mous sacrifices made for that end. But this was not the essential 
point. By recognizing the political existence of a great, independent 
nation in the new world, Spain condemned herself to lose, sooner or 
later, the magnificent transatlantic domain, the sovereignty of which 
had been transmitted by the princes of Austria to the Bourbons. 

* The fortress of Port Mahon was razed before making restoration to the 
Spanhirds. 



39 

Warned by the patriotic sagacity of Count d'Aranda, Charles III. 
had, it is true, resolved to introduce judicious reforms in the adminis- 
tration of his possessions, which were so vast that, far from regularly 
occupying them, Spain could not even explore them thorougldy. But 
the king did not dare, and perhaps would have dared in vain, to touch 
seriously the scaffolding of the institutions which his predecessors liad 
given to the West Indies, treated as great farms of Spain, rather than 
as dependencies of a crown careful for the interest of all its subjects. 
The spirit of the system established by Philip II. was not changed 
by the peace of 1783. But between New Mexico and the mouths of 
the Orinoco, between the Isthmus of Panama and the southern pampas 
of the valley of the La Plata, on both slopes of the great chain of the 
Cordilleras were the Creoles, many millions of people proud of their 
race, and dissatisfied with privileges given only to P^uropeans by birth. 
These Creoles of four great viceroyalties, and the prosperous country 
of Chili, listened readily to the voice of independent America, whose 
frontier, for hundreds of leagues, was that of Florida and Louisiana. 
It is true that the insurrection in thought did not become one in deed, 
until the paternal government had yielded to the reverses of the war 
of 1793, and the pacification of 1795, so disastrous for Spain. But 
what signify twenty-five years in the life of nations? After 1808, 
transatlantic Spain was lost to the mother-country as surely as American 
England was lost to Great Britain after the declaration of July 2, 
177^^6. 

The part which Spain took in the war of 1778 brought to light the 
faults in the social and political organization of that great, generous 
nation which, for a century and a half, had been the rival of France, 
and, in the western world, had threatened the balance of power, not 
less than religious and political liberty. The history of the Spanish 
monarchy presents the strange spectacle of germs of decay and of great- 
ness side by side ; of equal growth in power and in political faults ; of 
ontwai'd success impoverishing internal resources ; of decline visible to 
clear eyes at the very moment when the country was nearest to uni- 
versal dominion. The monarchy, founded by the marriage of Ferdinand 
and Isabella — ''the Catholic kings" — was, late in the fifteenth century, 
injured in population and industry by the impolitic and inhuman expul- 
sion of a half million Jews, whose trade and manufactures enriched the 
country. The fruits of the conquest of Grenada were, in great measure, 
lost by the cruel treatment of the Moors, — recent subjects, — whose 
persecution, forced rebellion, and final expulsion ruined agriculture 
and destroyed industry in the eastern half of the kingdom. The civil 
liberties of Castile died by the pitiless hand of Charles V. This king 
might flatter himself that his own genius had done more for his nation 
than her former assemblies of proud spirits, active and devoted to the 
public welfare. But, under Philip II., and incomparably more under 
the nominal reign of his miserable successor, the most stupid despotism, 
unyielding in great things, fickle in small ones, laid its hand of lead on 
all branches of social life and production in the territories. A system 
of economy, opposed to sound reason, and clearly condemned by 



40 

experience, ended by exhausting the provinces, and hastening the 
decline of popuhition, which emigration to America, on an immense 
scale, had ah'eady grievously diminished. Aragon had been deprived 
of her most important privileges by Philip II. ; what remained were 
destroyed with inhuman severity by Philip V., at the end of the Span- 
ish war of succession. Under an arbitrary and suspicious government, 
every thing was laid low in the countries which, by the division of the 
Spanish monarchy in 1713, passed to the Bourbons. This dynasty, 
undoubtedly, brought to the throne better sentiments and wiser inten- 
tions than the house of Austria, which ended with the unfortunate 
Charles II. But neither Philip V., early affected with disgust for 
royal duties ; nor Ferdinand VI., devoured by black melancholy ; nor 
even Charles III., although he was far superior to his brother and his 
father, could apply sufficiently powerful remedies to the chronic diseases 
which laid Spain waste. With lamentable folly, of which Spain does 
not offer the only example, the Castilians were in love with their faults, 
proud of the peculiar character which their vices gave them, and of the 
ruinous practices which were everywhere the inevitable cousequence. 
The king, superior in many respects to his people, would sometimes 
assist his intelligent ministers, but he either would not or could not 
walk firmly in the way of necessary reforms, and he did nothing which 
his successor could not neglect or even destroy. Europe was astonished 
at the insignificant part which Spain played, as a mere auxiliary of 
France, in a war wliich flattered her pride, and ought to have satisfied 
her revenge, — a great war against England, who had no ally. But, 
in fact, Charles III. had done all that he could with his exhausted 
resources and the poverty of means at his disposal. 

The separation of the Spanish colonies was soon followed by that of 
Brazil, so that Portugal, who had taken no part in tlie war of inde- 
pendence, nor seriously wavered in the friendship which common 
interests had formed between her and England, lost none the less the 
most important part of her colonial possessions, the largest and only 
lasting proof of Portuguese power beyond the ocean. 

Finally England came out of the war, which had lasted nine years 
in America, with diminished territory, forced to recognize the French 
navy as a formidable rival, and burdened with a debt unequalled in 
the past or present. Great Britain was obliged to establish on a new 
basis commercial relations with nations that had hitherto submitted to 
all regulations which her parliament had seen fit to make. Yet among 
the Bi-itish people, the change produced by the introduction of the 
United States into the great Christian republic heretofore limited to 
Europe, novel and important as it was, produced small disturbance and 
interfered little with future advancement. The pupil had rejected the 
authority of the teacher ; but in their essential nature the two nations 
were alike. In general, English institutions were retained in the thir- 
teen colonies ; and the fathers of the American confederation had founded 
their new nation on the jirinciples of English common law, according to 
the precedents of English history, by the inspiration of English thought, 
on the precepts of the law-givers and oracles of the English schools of 



41 

politics and law. The intellectual inheritance of Bacon and Locke, of 
Milton and Newton, of Cranmer and Knox, still more in a certain 
degree of William III. and Chatham, was a possession common to 
Great Britain and America. 

In a few years the English nation and the government saw clearly 
that their remaining possessions iu North America would, if managed 
wisely and left to the free growth of the colonizing spirit of the Saxon 
race, fully compensate for the loss of the old thirteen colonies. These 
prospective advantages have now been fully realized. Commerce with 
the United States, regulated by agreements freely discussed by both 
parties, brings to the British treasury infinitely larger sums than the 
old monopoly produced before the separation. Consequently, peace, 
once made, was on a sure foundation and favorable to the real interests 
of both nations. Washington was its sincere apostle and constant sup- 
porter. When the French Revolution had hurled into England that 
challenge of Hannibal, which was the signal for a bitter war of almost 
twenty-two years, Washington, then President of the United States, 
while preserving a real interest for France, and professing lasting 
gratitude for the assistance of Louis XVI., insisted so strongly on the 
duty and advantage of neutrality, that it was impossible for party sug- 
gestion or threat to make the American Union swerve from that policy 
which she had marked out for herself. She remained attached to it 
long after new men had succeeded Washington in the presidency, and 
in the direction of foreign affairs. 

But the creation of an independent nation in America by the assist- 
ance, and, as the world believed, principally by the assistance, of France 
produced consequences in the French monarchy of much greater im- 
portance than the rest of Europe felt. 

The political dogma of the sovereignty of the people had been pro- 
claimed in America with calm solemnity, the fruit of the deep convic- 
tion of an intelligent and religious people. The grandson of Louis XIV., 
the descendant of Saint Louis, had boldly fovored this doctrine, for 
which the philosophic school in France had, by its publications, for 
half a century been preparing the way. 

Monarchy, accepted up to this time in English America, as it had 
been in all other European colonies, had given place to a republic ; and 
social order had not sutiered, and the regular growth of material pros- 
perity had not received a sensible check. 

Carried away by the characteristic vivacity of their nature ; sharing 
the brilliant but dangerous gift which Providence has bestowed upon 
the French race, which seizes at a glance on general principles, and 
without reflection risks the univei'sal application of them, — the ruling 
classes in French society were aglow with enthusiasm for the Ameri- 
can system. They at once asked themselves if France should remain 
a mere looker-on at this new force. 

Cool reason and a careful examination of the social and political con- 
ditions on both sides of the Atlantic would have left no doubt as to the 
answer of this question. The just and fit counsel of America to France 
would have been to make immediate and important reforms on which 

6 



42 

wise men were already nearly in agreement : far from encouraging 
France in revolution, the example of America, properly understood, 
would have banished even the thought of it. 

The traditions, manners, and hereditary beliefs of the different classes 
in France, the great fact of distinction of orders and of classes in each 
order, finally the nature of the French character (and the experience 
of the eighty following years confirms this opinion), in a word, the 
whole social fabric, already too much undermined to resist an assault, 
but still too firm to give way easily, — all evidently prevented the sub- 
stitution at that time of a republic for a monarchy in France, without 
vast ruin and wretched excesses. 

From the close of the reign of Louis XIV., the best minds and the 
great hearts of the eighteenth century had recognized the need of sys- 
tematic reforms in all branches of the public service. But the plans 
adopted by the heir-presumptive to the crown, arranged by his loyal 
counsellors, and developed by the imagination rather than the reflection 
of an amiable and somewhat visionary * character, rested on the preser- 
vation of the fundamental institutions. The power of the king, accord- 
ing to the system upon which he acted, should in no way be lessened, 
but regulated in its application to the government of the people. The 
distinction of orders should be not only sustained, but strengthened by 
assigning to each its exact privileges and functions. Far from desiring 
to abolish advantages of birth, they sought to make them more honor- 
able by preventing the dissipation of patrimonies, and attaching duties 
to every superior station. The plan of Vauban, to establish a " ro^^al 
tithe," touched only a single privilege of the exemptions from taxation, 
henceforth condemned by all publicists, and very weakly defended evt-n 
by the interested parties themselves. 

At a time, then recent, when economists and contemplative philoso- 
phers, whom the public encouraged to take up the question of reforms, 
made plans which they flattered themselves would be put in practice, 
they assumed the heart}^ su})port of unlimited power in the monarch. 
They exhorted him to use his sovereign prerogative to abolish abuses, 
to rectify irregularities, to harmonize the different provincial laws, to 
restrain, and, if need were, suppress the privileges of orders and of 
corporations. It was on the supreme magistrate that these 2>reachers 
of reform relied to impi'ove the condition of his subjects. F'ar from 
wishing to take from the sovereign any of the powers which he then 
possessed, the innovators accredited by popular opinion desired to 
smooth the way before the steps of the head of tlie nation, and to make 
him a dictator with absolute legislative autliority. 

Parliaments, on their part, while constantly active in opposing the 
acts of the royal ministers, professed the most religious respect for the 
king's authority, " supreme and field from God alone." They would 
consent to reforms, even when they imperiously demanded great 

* They were the Due de Bourgogne, tlie Dues de Beauvilliers and de Clie- 
vreuse, and IVnelon, — not when lie wrote I'c'IciiHiqne, but when lie gave serious 
adviee to tlie new dauphin. 



43 

ones, only on condition that all acquired rights should be respected ; 
nothing was farther from their ideas than the plan of levelling all con- 
ditions, and transferring from the monarch to the multitude the direc- 
tion of affairs, the thorny work of legislation. 

The American school roughly turned aside the course of received 
opinions, introduced into the glowing and fickle imaginations of a witty 
rather than reflective generation foreign ideas, recommended by their 
novelty ; and thus to nullify the preparations made by a benevolent 
king, earnest counsellors, and sincere friends of the people, since the 
accession of Louis XVI., for a methodical reform in the government. 
History was abandoned for romance ; calm reflection, for fantastic 
enthusiasm. In avoiding beaten paths they hurried towards abysses ; 
but if such were (as we believe) the extreme consequences of the rev- 
olution in America, it is only just to repeat that the example of the 
Americans ought to have produced wholly different eff'ects. 

England, in consenting to an apjaarently disadvantageous peace, had 
shown the diflicult and meritorious virtue of resignation, and afterwards 
gave proof of a wisdom very rare in aristoci'atic governments, by mak- 
ing use, in her internal affairs, of the lessons learned from American 
emancipation. She made these lessons bear fruit, by applying them 
with justice and careful adaptation to established interests in proportion 
to their real importance. 

William Pitt, that minister great in the things given him to perform, 
greater still in the plans that he made but could not carry out on ac- 
count of the violence of the times, — Pitt set himself resolutely at woi'k 
as soon as jpace was assured. In 1786, a treaty of navigation and 
commerce, negotiated with the Comte de Vergennes, another bold and 
cleai'-sighted statesman, established between England and France easy 
and liberal relations. Heretofore such had been considered opposed 
to the different interests of the two nations ; but it was found that in 
reality they brought about a harmony of feeling favorable to both na- 
tions, equally proud of their civilization and of their power. The theory 
of free trade, modified to suit the demands of interests which had legal 
guai'antees, was put in practice in a way which ought at once to have 
made converts of intelligent people. Yet its triumph, after obstinate 
struggles with selfish advantages, deep-rooted prejudices, blind jealousies, 
and even the sophisms of science wrested from their true interpreta- 
tion, did not begin for seventy-four years. Let us never despair of 
that which is in harmony with the true welfare of nations and with the 
principles of eternal justice. 

The treaty of 178G with France, and another on a like basis, just 
signed, with America, did not limit Pitt's views in the sphere of reform. 
The political emancipation of Irish Protestants, declared in 1782, 
should be followed, in the clearly stated opinion of the prime minister, 
at a proper time, by the social emancipation of Irish Catholics ; and 
the union of the Irish Parliament with that of Great Britain, consum- 
mated in 1801, was delayed instead of being hastened by the foolish 
and disloyal insurrection of 1798. 

The minister of the crown could not yet get a vote for the suppres- 



44 

sion of the slave-trade, — that iniquity which Liverpool and other sea- 
hoard cities defended, hecause they found it a source of great profit. 
Pitt urged Wilberforce and Clarkson to propose it in the House of 
Commons, of which they were simple members. In the cabinet it was 
an open question. A superior duty forced Pitt to leave to his friends 
the trouble and the honor of gathering these immortal laurels. But he 
was never discouraged, and never grew cold in the support which he 
gave, with both voice and personal influence, to enable those good men 
to complete the long and difficult labor, which was drawing near its 
close when the son of Chatham " died, the victim of the noblest of 
sorrows." The next year (1807), Fox, himself on the verge of the 
grave, succeeded in making that a law for the British P^mpire, which 
was alread)'^ a law for humanity ; and which, thanks to English persist- 
ency, soon became a law for the civilized world.* 

Afterwards, successive reforms were made in the government of the 
still large colonial possessions remaining to England after the peace of 
1783. We have spoken of the salutary change in the government of 
Canada. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were united, greatly to the 
social and political advantage of both. At Jamaica and the other An- 
tilles, the I'oyal governors were assisted by representative assemblies. 
The Indian Empire had become, at this time, of immense importance, 
by its wars and its commerce ; and the feeling of outraged humanity, 
of justice trampled under foot, broke out in England with a strength 
against which the avarice of private speculation, and the authority of 
bad iirecedents, could not long defend the extortionate practices and 
habitual violence of the early governors of the East India Company. 
Public indignation fell at first upon the guilty individuals ; afterwards 
uipon the institutions which ])ermitted such malversation. On the whole, 
the inipulse given to liberal ideas and human requirements by the 
American Revolution affected the mother country more powerfully 
and more widely than it did the colonies themselves, although the latter 
may justly be proud that they were the origin and occasion of them. 

In France, the innovators and theorists made their assault with spe- 
cious doctrines and reckless declamation, not defining their aim, or, if 
they touched it, rushing beyond it. The intentions of the monarch 
were upright, and his mind was truly just, although slow ; but he had 
no strength of will. He lacked that cold and persistent resolution 
which alone lifts a reformatory prince above the mean opposition in 
which his court and numerous servants interested in preserving abuses 
entangle him as in a net, whose meshes one sharp word, one decided 
gesture, will break. Louis XVI. had not the character to iviU, as 
Alexander IL has done in our days, when, by peacefully changing the 
social constitution of the Russian Empire, the successor of Nicholas 
deserves the eternal gratitude of humanity. Unhappily, during the 
interval between the peace of Versailles and the opening of the States 
General (1783 to 1789), there was in France only one man whose will 

* The slave-trade was abolished in 1817, by a solemn convention between all 
the Christian nations of Europe. 



45 

was indispensable to the safety of his country. That man was the 
king ; the king, supreme legislator, source of all law,* last refuge of 
established institutions, heir of Henry IV, and of Louis XIV., heir 
also to his own misfortune and that of the world, of Louis XI. and 
Louis XV. ; burdened by the faults of others, and by the accumula- 
tion of historical precedents, with a formidable responsibility that he 
could not throw off, and had not the strength to bear. When, in popu- 
lar opinion, the third estate, which falsely called itself the people ^ claimed 
to be not only something but every thing f in the country, it was found 
that, on the other side, in actual legislation, in administration, in that 
which France had in place of a constitution, it was the king who rep- 
resented every thing. To save the nation in this terrible dilemma, 
there was needed extraordinary genius, a Henry IV. and a Richelieu 
combined ; but in Louis XVI. Providence had given France only a 
virtuous sovereign, crushed by the greatness of his part and the diffi- 
culties of his position. 

We must especially consider here the part taken in preparation for 
the French Revolution, and in the first acts of that terrible tragedy, 
by the men who had shared in the American campaigns, and who natu- 
rally carried back to the old world the ideas which were ti-iumphant in 
the new. 

At first their niimber was small. A single army corps had been 
landed on the American continent to fight under Washington. The 
French flag was illustrious by victories, and honorable even in reverses, 
on all the seas of the world ; but, above all others, this war had been 
for the French navy a renewal of the century's struggle with the Eng- 
lish. Lafayette, when he dared to forestall the decision of his govern- 
ment to assist America, was accompanied by a very small number of 
young gentlemen, whose names, with few exceptions, are written in the 
history we have just read. The only one of the Polish volunteers who 
returned to his own country and played an important part there w^as 
the hero of Lithuania, Thaddeus Kosciusko. Next to M. de Rocham- 
beau and M. de Lafayette, whose positions during the war were ex- 
ceiJtional, was the Marquis de Chastellux, \ whose chief honor is to 



* Caput Jerjis, head of the law. 

t This watch-word of war and revolution, raised by Sie'3-cs, contained, in the 
view of cahn reason enh'ifhtened by iiistory, the veriest absurdity and the most 
flagrant wrong. In consequence of imagining itself, in 1789, the so/e ruler of a 
nation, wliere two otlier orders liad historic and legal riglits, the Tliird Estate 
was reduced, ten years later, to subjection to an absolute monarch. The state 
of mind at the beginning of the [{evolution is clearly shown by the immense sen- 
sation this saying produced ; the excited or stupefied multitude believed it a 
sort of decree proclaimed by eternal justice and by common sense. 

J The Marquis de Chastellux, an avowed but very moderate friend of the 
philosophic school, was a general officer in the French auxiliary corps of the 
American army. His Voi/aqes dans F Amerkjue septiiitn'otiale, made and described 
after the war, added to the literary reputation of jM. de Chastellux ; their publi- 
cation was completed in 1782. The author did not witness the Revolution. He 
died in 1788, the year in which France lost Buffon and vainly sought for a worthy 
successor to Vergennes, dead some months before. 



46 

have made illustrious by his writings the cause that he served with his 
sword. Many of the officers who were Washington's companions in 
arms were forced into retirement, by age or wounds, at the outbreak of 
the French Revolution. They all, however, whether in the ranks of 
the army or scattered at their own firesides, formed an American 
school, without official character, without formal organization,* but 
important on account of its influence upon the public mind. This 
school was not ignorant of the direction which public opinion took 
after the installation of the Constituent Assembly, when that body took 
possession of the sovereign power, almost immediately after the convo- 
cation of the States General in 1789, 

Until the explosion in France of a revolution which attacked, not 
like that in America, a foreign rule, but the royal prerogative itself 
and the vital institutions of the country, the officers returned from the 
war of Independence had shown themselves, almost without exception, 
open friends of the reforms which the king, on his side, was determined 
to carry out in good faith in all branches of public administration. The 
soldiers who thought and spoke thus, highly esteemed in the array and 
in the nation, had the calm and happy conviction that they had fulfilled 
all their duties, and had been faithful to their fiimily traditions and the 
obligations of their station, 

Indeed, the French nobility, especially the military nobility, which 
served at its own expense and saw the court only on rare occasions, 
had been, from the middle of the seventeenth century, devoted heart 
and soul to the crown, but not at all servile to royalty. While sacri- 
ficing its vital interests, it preserved the sentiment of hereditary dignity. 
The way in which its enemies in the other classes of the empire op- 
posed it, and set their hearts upon despoiling it, showed plainly that 
an involuntary respect accompanied, in popular feeling, the envy and 
hatred which the misunderstood teachings of the philosophic school 
had aroused in most of the provinces against the " second of the privi- 
leged orders." On the eve of the Revolution, the gentlemen could be 
reproached for no such feeling. Unquestionably they were generally 
averse to an entire levelling of the nation, and they desii'ed the con- 
tinuance of the distinction between the orders ; but they entered more 
ardently than the others into all the projected measures for the relief 
of misery, the extension of popular education, the amelioration of the 
criminal laws, the abolition of all abuses which put tyranny in the place 
of law. On all these matters, they were in free and affectionate inter- 
change of thoughts and wishes with their former brothers-in-arms in 
America. Patriotism was a passion they all felt sincerely and professed 
eloquently. An illustrious writer t of established authority in the his- 
tory of ancient France has observed, that the sentiment of the collective 
nationality of the nations from which the French monarchy has been 
gradually formed first appeared in the order of the nobility, where it 

* The Society of the Cincinnati was only a siiort-lived association, without 
stability in Europe. 

t Auguslin Thierry, Histoire du Tiers Etat. 



47 

soon became paramount ; and foi* the obligations imposed by this sweet, 
strong passion, gentlemen were lavish of their blood and their treasure, 
even when the king, whom they looked upon as the natural head of 
their order, was personally unworthy of such sacrifice. This devotion 
to the king continued in i7S9 ; but, after the reign of Louis XV., and 
especially after the American war, another sentiment claimed a large 
share in the feelings of the nobility, — that of their own dignity, revived 
by the remembrance of the time preceding the rule of Louis XIV., and 
of their duties to other classes and to humanity in general. Such feel- 
ings would have brought forth valuable results, morally and politically, 
if the fierce irruption of material violence, of impracticable systems, of 
angry declamation, of every thing that belongs to the madness of unre- 
strained passion, and thought swept beyond the limits of experience, — 
if the Revolution, in one word, had not driven back all inclination to 
kindness and conciliation in such a manner that men became implac- 
able foes, Avho would on both sides have gained infinitely by remaining 
allies in the service of the national cause. 

After 1789, and especially after the crimes against the dignity and 
the person of the monarch in 1791 and 1792, when the military nobility 
was forced to decide on its course of action, under circumstances for 
which there was no precedent in the memory of man, the survivors of 
the American war divided into two parties, each officer following his 
own impulses. Some believed their swords, their fortunes, and their 
blood belonged to the supreme head of the army, to the first gentleman 
in the kingdom ; they marched into foreign lands to undertake there 
the defence of the late institutions of their own country. 

Others believed that their first duty was to their native soil ; there 
they would defend, under new colors, the institutions which the body 
of the people had accepted, and which their makers believed to be 
models from autiipiity, or copies of the American Republic. Let us 
be just in offering respect, without invidious distinction, to the memory 
of those brave antagonists. They all thought they obeyed the command 
of duty ; most of them sacrificed for that all their private interests. 
They had conscientiously answered in different ways a tremendous ques- 
tion, on which eternal justice had given no verdict, unless we consider 
as such the judgments pronounced by Fortune. And how various even 
these have been ! Let us cease, let us cease, from condemnation and 
recrimination ! The study of this age, so full of tragic incidents, ought, 
apart from the higher considerations to which we have alluded, to touch 
our hearts with respectful pity for the actors in those terrible scenes. 

In the army which followed the Hag of the republican assemblies, 
Rochambeau * and D'Estaing f fought with sad but unshaken fidelity. 
Their reward was, for the first, exile ; for the second, the scaffold. 

* M. de Rochambeau was the last Marshal of France created by Louis XVI. 
in 1791. The following year, finding the troops disobedient, and disgusted by 
tlie atrocities committed at Paris, lie resigned the command of the army of the 
north. He escaped the scaffold by flight, and died in the obscurity of exile in 
1807. 

t Admiral d'Estaing received, in 1790, the command of the national guard 



48 

Lafayette's fate was exceptional, like his character and the first acts 
of his public life. When the foi-m of government was changed, a 
prominent position was ready for him. In 178'J, he became the idol 
of the people, who imagined that they saw in him the genius of free 
America crossing the ocean to deliver the Old World. Having done 
more than any other person to introduce a parliamentary constitution 
in which royalty should keep its place, but not its power, Lafayette 
tried to oppose one last barrier to the overfiovv of demagogism ; but he 
had only his sword and the remnant of his popularity. His sword was 
broken by his own soldiers ; his |)restige was lost in the city, where 
the destinies of France were decided. Forced not only to pass almost 
alone into the camp of his enemies, but also to ask their chiefs for pro- 
tection for his life, he was deceived in this last trust, and the only asylum 
he found was a prison. His captivity, as unjust as it was long, kept 
him from taking any part in the political or military events of the 
Reign of Terror and the administration of the Directoi-y. The rest of 
his career does not come within the jilan of our work. We only add, 
that the character of Lafayette was formed, and his principles acquired 
imchangeable firmness, while he served in America by the side of 
Washington. When he returned to his own country, he constantly 
refused to take any part in the acts of a power that departed more and 
more widely from the forms and spirit of republican institutions. He 
yielded neither to the advances nor the displeasure of Napoleon. The 
former prisoner of Olmiitz, become the hermit of La Grange, remained 
a mere spectator of the great events which, between the battle of Ma- 
rengo and the first capitulation of Paris, threw Europe into confusion 
many times, and gave to France experience of successes and defeats 
alike unique in history. 

The restoration reopened a political career to him. He gradually 
regained public favor, and was made, for a day only, in 1830, the arbiter 
of the fate of the monarchy, which was shaken and tending to a change 
which would give it no solidity. Lafayette lived long enough to see 
in America, where he received a welcome both cordial and stately, its 
power become gigantic and firm by the union of its members. Amer- 
ica generously rewarded the services given to her in her early need. 
Death spared Lafayette to an advanced age, and he never lost faith in 
the beliefs or even -the illusions by which he had lived.* 

IVIany olficers who had served under Kochambeau in America were 
in the army which followed the royal princes to the baidvs of the 
llhine, and which, through the cruel sufferings of nine consecutive cam- 
paigns, faithfully defended the colors of ancient France, and the senti- 



at Versailles. His services, and tlie sincerity of liis devotion to tlie cause which 
he emliraecd, coulii not save liim from the jn'oseription wlilcli levelled all noble 
heads, lie was guillotined in ]71'4, at the aj^e of 7-1. 

* M. de Lafayette was called to the Council of the Notables bj' the choice of 
the king in 17>^7. We know the i)art whieh fell to him in the Constituent As- 
sembly. He lived till 18I>1, preceding to the tomb by two years the king 
Charles X., who was born a few months before in 1757. 



49 

ment of " unconquerable love " * for its native land. Among them was 
the Chevalier Durand, who commanded the batteries at the siege of 
Yorktown, who pressed the hand of Washington after that decisive 
victory, who remained by the side of Admiral de Grasse, one of the 
few survivors of the disaster to the fleet of the Antilles, and who, nine 
years later, had the unique distinction of raising and commanding a 
regiment of his own name in the French emigrant army. 

Returned to their homes after the First Consul had re-established 
order in France, these exiles, poor and out of employment, were never- 
theless treated with respectful consideration by the government of Na- 
poleon. These old officers, so long as they lived, kept a knowledge of 
and taste for political liberty, which they sincerely believed to be com- 
patible with the royal prerogative in a limited monarchy. Such had, 
indeed, been the cardinal doctrine in the political credo of old France 
since the establishments of Saint Louis. 

At the very time when the French Revolution began in Paris, North 
America inaugurated the Constitution,t which, until 1861, was both 
the basis of its federal government and the safeguard of the rights 
maintained by each State with inflexible determination. 

Warmly sympathizing with the movement opening under such charm- 
ing auspices, and draped with the splendid colors of hope. Young 
America applauded her former ally, who seemed to be following her 
example. Washington was President of the Union, and still had al- 
most unlimited influence over the feelings of a grateful nation. The 
clear-sightedness of this great citizen did not then fail. With affisc- 
tionate anxiety, he urged his former companions-in-arms and their 
political friends to be moderate in action, and to preserve for the au- 
gust head of the " constitutional king " the respect due to his rank, the 
gratitude due to the sacrifices he had made without hesitation. 

One of the most enlightened of American statesmen, Gouverneur 
Morris, was sent to represent his country at the new government of 
France, and to recall, when occasion offered, the wise counsels of Wash- 
ington to the leaders of the parties into whose hands the reality of 
power had passed in Paris. The journal of Morris and contemporary 
witnesses show how admirably he understood his mission, and that he 
neglected no means to stop the Revolution in that unbridled course 
through blood and all forms of delirium, which dragged France to the 
inevitable end, — the eclipse of liberty. 

When the Convention declared war against Great Britain, the agents 
sent successively to America by that Assembly under which France had 
been incessantly tossed between tyranny and anarchy did their utmost 
to draw the United States into a deadly struggle with the English. 
But their efforts were useless before Washington's resolution to keep 
his country at peace. So, while the hero of Independence, the founder 



* "Amour indompte;" the beautiful expression of the poet of Cinque Mag- 
gie. 

t Accepted by the different States in succession, the Constitution went into 
operation March 4, 1789. 

7 



50 

of the Union, lived, America remained firm in the neutrahty whicli was 
both her duty and her interest. The most violent provocations, the 
spoliation of which her merchant-ships became the victims in punish- 
ment for her refusal, the declamations of leading demagogues, jealous 
of the glory of Washington and eager to gain his heritage, could not 
change in the least that pacific policy which the second President, John 
Adams, had the honor of faithfully carrying out. 

Thus all thoughtful observers clearly see the difference between the 
spirit of the American Revolution in 1776 and the French in 1789. 
The first did only what was necessary to insure to the people of the 
United States its independent existence and self-government. It under- 
took no changes in the social order excepting by successive and pru- 
dent modifications of the civil code. The privileges which were abolished 
had no i-iglit to exist, and made no resistance ; there was no distinction 
of orders anywhere, and in most of the provinces they had never ex- 
isted. The continuity of time was not broken ; the memories of the 
past, even those of the war in which the colonies assisted the mother- 
country from 1755 to 17G3 (dates then very recent), were held with 
affectionate respect and pride, which, in the old families, were not at all 
opposed to equality before the law. How much better would the ftite 
of France have been, if, instead of eulogizing the institutions of Amer- 
ica, she had studied them ! How many precious resources the country 
would have saved! How many foolish attempts she would have 
avoided ! With what safety and comparative ease the really useful 
and just results of the Revolution would have been obtained, without 
being bought by iniquity, dishonored by crimes, and always compro- 
mised by the spirit of blind innovation, chimerical levelling, political 
irritation, and incorrigible imprudence, from whicli France has suffered 
so much ! 

By the treaty of Basel, in 1795, France recovered Louisiana ; so 
that, for eight years, the colonial territory of the French Rejiublic bor- 
dered on the new and flourishing States which had been formed between 
the Mississipi)i and the Alleghany Mountains.* From this recovery, 
the importance of which she did not appreciate, France gained no more 
advantage than Spain had done during the thirty years that she owned 

Louisiana-t 

But the First Consul, at war with Great Britain, and determined 
not to lay down his arms until he had destroyed that adversary against 
whom his fortune was destined to be shattered, wished, by the sacrifice 
of a magnificent projjcrty (the value of which he probably did not 
know), to free himself from the care of defending it against the masters 
of Jamaica, the rulers of the ocean. On the other hand, he thought 
that, by selling Louisiana to the United States, he should strengthen 

* Tlicse States — at that time Territories, but afterwards admitted to tlie Union 
with the same riglits as the older States — are Illinois, Iventueky, Tennessee, 
and Mississippi. 

t It was not till 1765 that Spain decided to take actual possession of New 
Orleans and its dependencies, althouf^h the formal cession by France had been 
announced two years before. 



61 

with that nation the bonds of friendship, loosened by the brutalities of 
the preceding regimes ; that he sliould eventually find in her an ally 
against England ; and that it was better for France to have in America 
a powerful friend rather than an unimportant colony. Finally, he was 
fully sensible of the pecuniary advantage of the trarsaction, for he had 
fixed the price at eighty million francs. The United States were no 
longer poor ; the finances of France were painfully reviving from the 
total ruin into which they had been thrown by the madness of the Con- 
vention, and by the incapacity, as much as the immorality, of the Direc- 
tory. The negotiation was conducted openly and rapidly between the 
American commissioners appointed by Thomas Jefferson, President of 
the American Republic since 1801, and the delegates of the First 
Consul. Of these, M. Barbe de Marbois * was the head. A statesman, 
a skilful financier, a sincere friend of humanity, and loyally devoted to 
the service of his country, Marbois understood the full importance of 
this transaction : and he spoke of it in his memoirs with an earnestness 
and emotion that do honor to his judgment and his heart. 

So Louisiana, after sharing again for eight years the destinies of 
France, to whom she owed her settlement in 1718, became a member 
of the American Union, to remain there for ever. The territory of 
Avhich President Jefferson took possession in the name of Congress, 
without opposition from Great Britain or Spain, had no definite boun- 
dary on the north-west. But it formally comprised the region from 
which, at different times, the States and Territories of Louisiana, Ar- 
kansas, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the great Indian reserve 
were made. Its possession opened to American colonization a way to 
the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and gave it a fair claim (which 
it afterward put forward) to the whole valley of the Oregon, the prin- 
cipal affluent of the Pacific Ocean.f We may say, without exaggera- 
tion, that the peaceful acquisition of Louisiana, by doubling the territory 
of the American Union, by the annexation of the whole valley of the 
Father of AYaters, raised it, not at once, but in a short time, to rank 
with the great powers of the world, and assured to it pre-eminence in 
the western hemisphere. This new and immense obligation to France 
was appreciated with sincere gratitude by the United States ; never- 
theless the}^ persevered for nine years in the neutrality favorable to 
their commerce, and apparently necessary in the weak condition of 
their navy. 

The cession of Louisiana by France to the Anglo-Americans was a 
disaster to Spain. It exposed the whole Mexican frontier to the ardent 
and unscrupulous action of a race which increased with great rapidity, 
and put no bounds to its greed of territorial possession. Florida, after 



* Francois Barbe de Marbois, born in 1745, liad, before the Revolution, filled 
consular and diplomatic positions in America : President of the Council of An- 
cients in 1797, struck by the conj) d'etat of the 18th of August, escapins; almost 
by miracle from his pestilential prison at Sinnamary, he was appointed by the 
First Consul Minister of Finance. His honorable life was prolonged till 1837. 

t This is the river Bourbon of our transactions in the last century. 



0^ 

the cession of New Orleans to the United States, became the limit (at 
least on the land side) of the great Anglo-Saxon republic, and the Sa- 
bine River was only a slight protection for Texas. At the beginning 
of the present century, it was easy to foresee with certainty tlie time 
when these beautiful and fertile provinces would change masters. 
Florida was occupied in 1817, and two years later the government of 
Ferdinand VII., exhausted by its vain efforts to reconquer the rebel 
colonies in Spanish America, ceded the two provinces to the United 
States. From the Mexican Republic, weak heir of the Spanish power 
north of the isthmus, the American Union won Texas, at the price of a 
war which gave to the United States all the northern part of the old 
vice-royalty of New Spain. Under General Scott the American eagle 
flew to the lakes of Mexico, and returned only to fasten her talons for 
ever in the valley of the River del Norte, the northern Cordilleras, and 
California, richer than any other portion of the New World in miner- 
als and products of the earth. 

In the acquisition of New Orleans lay the germ of San Francisco, 
that rival of New York in the bewildering rapidity of its growth and 
the almost limitless expansion of its commercial relations. 

The French ambassador had at least a partial view of such a future, 
when, on April 30, 1803, he signed the treaty which transferred to the 
American tjnion a region larger than France, Italy, and Germany 
united. The words of M. Barbe de Marbois on that solemn occasion, 
to which we have already alluded, were serious and prophetic. It 
was part of the policy of the United States, still modest in language 
and full of respect for the older powers, to make little noise about this 
magnificent acquisition, and to organize slowly the territory of which 
it had gained possession. 

Indeed, it was six months before the President received from Con- 
gress authority to take formal possession of the territory ceded by 
France to the United States. The following year, by a second act of 
Congress, Louisiana was divided into two districts, under the control 
of the executive, and with only territorial privileges. At last, on 
April 8, 1811, the " Territory of Orleans " was admitted to the Union 
as the seventeenth State, with the double character of sovereignty in 
its internal affairs and representation in the two houses of Congress. 
The successive formation of the other States and Territories made from 
the old province of Louisiana does not belong to our subject. 

When the Fir.st Consul of the Frencli Republic ceded Louisiana to 
the United States, George Washington had been dead four years. He 
was followed to tlie grave by the sorrow and blessings of a whole na- 
tion, intelligent enough to understand the virtues of a citizen whose 
equal in his own country the ages have not produced. Washington, at 
the age of sixty-five, and at the close of his second presidential term, 
positively refused to accept a tiiird ; and, 1)}^ this wise abnegation, he 
established a constitutional precedent from which the United States has 
not yet turned aside. Casting over the future of the Union wliich he 
had done so much to make, and succeeded so perfectly in strengthen- 
ing, a glance saddened by the justice of his foresight, but consoled 



53 

by an unwavering faith in Divine Providence, — Washington desired 
to bequeath to his country tlae last counsels of his devotion and the 
treasure of his experience. He wrote them in a paper which will be 
as immortal as the memory of his own greatness : " A Farewell Address 
to the People of the United States," dated Sept. 17, 1796. We may 
affirm, with the certainty of an historical demonstration, that all the 
prosperity of the American Union is due to the faithful following of 
the i^recepts of its founder, and all the calamities which have overtaken 
this republic have been caused by the forgetfulness or the system- 
atic violation of the doctrines stated so strongly and so modestly by 
Washington, 

Benjamin Franklin died a few months after Washington.* John 
Adams, the immediate successor of the hero in war and in peace, had 
honestly ti-ied to carry out his political system. But when the treaty, 
ranking next in importance to that of Versailles (Sept. 3, 1783), was 
signed at Paris by the plenipotentiaries of France and of America, the 
presidential chair had been for two years occupied by Thomas Jeffer- 
son. This honor seemed rightfully to belong to the bold and able 
author of the Declaration of Independence. Yet the spirit in which 
Washington had filled his high office, governing impartially all discord- 
ant interests, and restraining by his personal dignity, as much as by the 
memory of his acts, all selfish passions, — this calm and moderate spirit 
no longer controlled American affairs. Jefferson was raised by the 
opposition to the highest office ; and, during the eight years of his 
presidency, he experienced and bitterly felt the difficulties heaped up 
in his path by the very means he had used to open it for himself. Jef- 
ferson, however, lives in American history, a figure allied to antiquity 
by the breadth of his talents and the strength of his character. He had 
the glory of giving his name to the largest acquisition that any nation 
ever made by diplomacy, and that gave it an unparalleled advantage 
in history, without the cost of a single drop of blood. The period of 
the alliance helween France and the United States was worthily com- 
pleted by this great event, which renders the memory of Jefferson f 
for ever dear to America. 

At the time when our narrative closes, the United States had reached 
the most enviable condition for a political community ; the vigor of 
youth, the fulness of hope, moderation in opinions, respect for justice 
and for acquired rights (at least in all that concerned white men), char- 
acterized the external and internal actions of this nation. Rapid and 

* This is a mistake. Franklin died April 17, 1790; Washington died Dec. 
14, 1799. — [Translator.] 

t Thomas Jefferson, born April 2, 1743, belonged, like George Washington, 
to the old cavaliers, the colonizers of Eastern Virginia. His family had the 
honorable distinction from generation to generation of giving friendship and, as 
far as possible, protection to the Indians. Chosen President (the third in the 
order of time) of the United States in 1801, and re-elected for a second term in 
1805, he lived till the close of 1826, and took part in the fiftieth anniversary of 
the Independence, the principles of which he had formulated, and the audacity 
of which he justified in a well-considered and solemn appeal to the conscience 
of humanity. 



54 

continuous expansion, wisely regulated, added each year myriads of 
citizens to the nation and vast districts to cultivation ; riches increased 
without sensibly changing the antique frugality of manners. The Union 
had, without danger, reduced its regular army to a very few regiments ; 
for the militia, ready at the first call, were sutficient for the safety of 
the frontiers, and the moral arm of the law had unquestioned authority 
in society. Another blessing had been granted to the American people 
in the gradual extinction of the hatred, formerly so bitter, between 
the conquered loyalists and the independents, absolute masters of the 
country. 

The unmerciful laws against the defenders of the ancient rule, which 
explain without wholly justifying the exasperation caused by the civil 
war and the calamities endured by the provinces whei'e it raged, were 
generally eluded or greatly softened in their execution. The confis- 
cated property was restored or bought at a low price by the relatives 
of the exiles, who returned it to the former owners. Family ties, 
roughly broken by the opposition of principles, were soon reuewed, and 
former enemies concluded marriages between tlieir children. One of 
the most striking examples of these happy reconciliations attracted the 
attention of travellers who lately visited Boston, in the library of Wil- 
liam H. Prescott, one of the most honored sanctuaries of American 
literature. There they saw crossed in fraternal repose the swords worn 
by the ancestors of the historian, Colonel Prescott of Pepperell and 
Captain John Linzee of the royal British navy, who both fought in 
the heroic duel of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775.* 

How instructive is the startling contrast presented by France and 
the United States in 1789 ! France selected from the examples which 
America offered her precisely and exclusively those which suited neither 
her political nor social oi"ganization. To all others she obstinately shut 
her eyes. The great American school had deteriorated so in those 
few years, that when Lafayette — who truly represented it, and whose 
popularity, after the Assembly of the Notables, had eclipsed that of the 
other authors of new ideas — went to perform the most honorable action 
of his life before the bar of the Legislative Assembly, after the crime of 
the 20th of June, his just and noble request was rejected with brutal 
scorn. When, a few days later, he rejoined the outposts of the army 
which had been placed under his command, in face of the emperor's 
troops, the only resource left him, in order to save the Revolution from 



* This " unique trophy," as it is called by the Reverend Mr. Frothingham, 
author of a noble poem, lias been removed to the rooms of the Mass. Historical 
Society. It is sad to read, in the correspondeiiee of the ministers of Louis XVI., 
in 1782, the expressions of scorn and anger towards the American loyalists. lu 
their praiseworthy desire to take the shortest possible road to i)eace, M. de Ver- 
gennes and his colleagues were very impatient when the English ministers, 
better Judges under the circumstances of what honor and humanity' demanded, 
insisted for a long time on the duty of England to obtain complete amnesty for 
American loyalists. Ten years later, the followers of the King of France had 
a cruel experience like that of the men whom they so harshly cast out of the 
treaty. 



55 

what would have been one of its most revolting crimes, was to give 
himself up * to his euemies and the cabinet of Vienna, who, on this 
occasion, were heedless of the voice of justice and the counsels of gen- 
erosity. If he had remained in Paris, Lafayette would perhaps have 
shared the fate, " glorious and beautiful, but cruel above all others," 
of his companion-in-arms in the war of American Independence, the 
Baron de Viomesnil, killed on August 10 before the last rampart of 
constitutional royalty.f 

May new generations, at least, profit by such lessons, which history, 
in her majestic impartiality, offers to all nations ! At the pi'esent time, 
few studies would be more instructive, or of more direct application 
to the conduct of political affairs on both sides of the ocean, than that 
of the principles by which the American Revolution was begun, con- 
tinued, and ended ; and the examination of the consequences it had for 
the principal ally of the United States. 

There is still time to learn from what was the heroic age of the New 
World lessons of moderation in reform, of freedom in opinion, of re- 
spectful regard for all that law has held sacred through a long series 
of years. The gigantic Reimblic of the AVest, recently rent by a civil 
war, whose calamities the old spirit of moderation and of mutual con- 
cessions to the common good would perhaps have turned aside, — this 
Union, re-established by force of arms, stirred by the passions of hatred 
and revenge ; yielding, also, sometimes to the temptations continually 
born from great wealth and unbalanced strength, — cannot go back too 
affectionately or with too much docility to the examples given by the 
actions and by the words of the illustrious men and the obscure heroes, 
who, in deliberative assemblies and on fields of battle, accomplished the 
work to which are for ever gloriously attached the immortal names of 
Adams, Jefferson, Greene, Lafayette, Rochambeau, and, first of all in 
arms and in administration, George Washington. 



* Aug. 20, 1792. 

t Charles du Houx, Baron de Viomesnil, born in 1728, lieutenant-general of 
the array. 



France and the United Spates. 



Historical Review, 

BY THE 

COUNT ADOLPHE DE CIRCOURT, 

HONORARY MEMBER OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



























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